Music and Dyslexia

JWBK205-Miles JWBK205-FM November 8, 2007 21:35

Music and Dyslexia

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Music and Dyslexia: A Positive Approach. Edited by Tim Miles, John Westcombe and Diana Ditchfield© 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-470-06557-0


Music andDyslexia

A Positive Approach

Edited by

TIM MILESJOHN WESTCOMBEDIANA DITCHFIELD

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Music and dyslexia: a positive approach / [edited by] T.R. Miles; JohnWestcombe; Diana Ditchfield.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references (p. ).ISBN 978-0-470-06557-0 (cloth)1. Children with disabilities—Education. 2. Music—Instruction and study.3. Dyslexia. I. Miles, T. R. (Thomas Richard) II. Westcombe, John. III. Ditchfield, Diana.MT17.M87 2007618.92’8553—dc22 2007025154

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British LibraryISBN: 978-0-470-06557-0 (cloth)ISBN: 978-0-470-06558-7 (paper)Typeset by Aptara, New Delhi, IndiaPrinted and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow.

This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestryin which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production.

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http://www.wiley.com


Contents

Foreword vii

List of contributors ix

Preface xiii

Section I Tackling problems

1. Dyslexia and other developmental differencesTim Miles 3

2. Things that can go wrong Tim Miles 11

Section II In and around the classroom

3. In and around the classroomChristine McRitchie Pratt 19

4. Classroom rhythm games for literacy supportKatie Overy 26

5. Early years: Deirdre starts to learn pianoOlivia McCarthy and Diana Ditchfield 45

6. Winning over the reluctants Christine McRitchiePratt, Diana Ditchfield, Sheila Oglethorpe andJohn Westcombe 55

7. Can music lessons help the dyslexic learner?Sheila Oglethorpe 57

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Contents

8. Parallels between the teaching of musical andmathematical notation Tim Miles 68

9. The paperwork Diana Ditchfield 7510. Sight-reading Sheila Oglethorpe 8211. Sight-reading and memory Michael Lea 9212. Ten top tips and thoughts Nigel Clarke 10013. Can computers help? Matching the inner with the

outer ear Adam Apostoli 101

Section III Strategies and successes

14. Positive connections across the generationsAnnemarie Sand and John Westcombe 109

15. Similarities and differences in the dyslexic voicePaula Bishop-Liebler 117

16. Thirty-seven oboists Carolyn King 12417. Suzuki benefits for children with dyslexia

Jenny Macmillan 13718. Dyslexia: no problem Diana Ditchfield 143

Section IV Science takes us forward

19. Insights from brain imaging Katie Overy 15120. Music reading: a cognitive

neuroscience approach Lauren Stewart 162

Index 171

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Foreword

Tim Miles and his colleagues have edited and contributed to a mostuseful book of essays. It will be useful not only to specialist teachers ofchildren with dyslexia but also to many class teachers who have childrenwith a variety of different difficulties among their pupils, for theemphasis throughout is on neurological differences between one childand another, whether these children are identified as having specialneeds or not. The term ‘neurodiversity’ is a helpful one, because itsuggests that there are ways of teaching which, in the early years, willappeal to all children, whatever their developmental differences, andwhich they can all enjoy. The rhythm games described in Chapter 4 areespecially enlightening. All children can join in and practise their‘performance’, and everyone will benefit. Moreover, they can be taughtby teachers without specialist music training, a huge advantage in mostschools. The book is thus of great practical value.

It is also optimistic and cheerful. It is impossible not to sympathizewith the horrors for a dyslexic student of Grade V theory (a horror wellenough known to those who are not dyslexic). And the strategies forteaching and learning musical notation for those who are dyslexic will beeagerly read by music teachers. In many different ways, this is anexcellent addition to the growing literature of dyslexia and music, and itis to be warmly welcomed.

Mary WarnockHouse of Lords

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List of contributors

An asterisk (*) marks a cameo writer.

Adam Apostoli is a 20-year-old undergraduate student at the Universityof Edinburgh, currently in his third year of a degree in Music Technology.A keen singer, Adam hopes to pursue further study in HistoricalMusicology and Performance following his degree.

Paula Bishop-Liebler, a doctoral student at the Institute of Education,London, is researching links between music and dyslexia. She assessesand supports dyslexics at the Dyslexia Teaching Centre, Kensington, andin a variety of conservatoires including the Royal Academy of Music, theRoyal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Nigel Clarke studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Pattersonand won the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence. He has beenComposer in Residence or similar to Black Dyke Mills Band and theAlabama Wind Ensemble. Nigel has written soundtracks to a number offeature films and was nominated recently at the World SoundtrackAwards.

Diana Ditchfield studied piano performance at the Royal Irish Academyof Music, before taking degrees in Education and teaching in secondaryschool in the United Kingdom. Her interest in dyslexia started in the1980s. She teaches piano at the Municipal School of Music in Limerickand is a Learning Support Tutor in Disability Services at University level.

*Margaret Howlett-Jones trained at the Froebel Institute, Roehampton,with music as her special study, and worked for seven years as a primaryschool teacher. Following maternity leave, she took on a number of piano

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pupils and became increasingly interested in dyslexia in themusic-learning context, taking the RSA Diploma. She is Secretary to theBritish Dyslexia Association Music Committee.

Carolyn King read Biochemistry at Oxford and secured her PhD at UCLHospital Medical School. Ten years of research were undertaken on themechanism of action of cholera toxin. She then established anoboe-orientated second career. Happily, both of these have relevance insight-reading. She recently completed an MA in Musical Teaching inProfessional Practice at Reading University.

Michael Lea is a double bass player who graduated from the BBCTraining Orchestra to CBSO and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Sincemoving into the freelance world, he has played in over 250 films andmany famous recordings. He taught for many years at the GuildhallSchool of Music, and latterly has devoted time to composition.

Jenny Macmillan has an MA in Psychology for Musicians from SheffieldUniversity. She is a Suzuki piano teacher and ESA teacher trainer inCambridge. She gives lectures and demonstrations throughout theUnited Kingdom on the Suzuki approach and has contributed to severalmusic education journals.

Olivia McCarthy graduated in Music from University College, Cork,specialising in piano performance. Since obtaining her Higher Diplomaof Education, she has taught piano, state examination music and thecommon diploma syllabus for many years at the Municipal School ofMusic, Limerick City, where she is presently Head of the PianoDepartment.

Christine McRitchie Pratt has always been involved in teaching andmusic-making both in schools and privately. She writes musicals as wellas playing the harp and hurdy-gurdy. Her commitment to the artsincludes involvement in the ADC Theatre, Cambridge, and being afounder member of Cambridge Youth Music.

Tim Miles, OBE, MA, PhD, CPsychol., FBPS, was the first Professor ofPsychology at the University of Wales, Bangor, serving from 1963 to 1987,and is now Professor Emeritus. He has published widely both ondyslexia and other topics. He is an amateur cellist.

Sheila Oglethorpe graduated from the Royal Academy of Music havingstudied piano, cello and singing. She taught music at primary andsecondary level and now teaches privately. She does dyslexia/musicconsultancy at Salisbury Cathedral School. The second edition of her book

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Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook was published in2002. She lectures for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.

Katie Overy is a Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh andCo-Director of the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development.She has a long-standing interest in the role of music in human learning,with an emphasis on interdisciplinary research and the integration ofresearch and practice.

*Pauline Poole trained as a Primary School Teacher and taught across thephase, and now lectures in a College of Further Education. She iscurrently finishing the OCR SpLD Diploma Units. She delights in sharingher love of singing with children, and, as a committed Christian, Paulinespends her spare time involved in children’s and youth work forchurches in North Hertfordshire and Albania.

Annemarie Sand trained at the Royal Academy of Music and hasperformed extensively with major orchestras and opera companies bothhere and abroad. Her repertoire covers demanding roles from Sieglindein Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Maria in Berg’s opera Wozzeck tocontemporary opera. She now combines her solo career with teaching.

Lauren Stewart originally studied Physiological Sciences at Oxford, buttransferred from bodies to brains via neuroscience training anddoctorates at UCL and Harvard. Her interest in the neuropsychology ofmusic stems from the belief that music provides a unique window ontothe human mind and brain. Her current research includes amusia(inability to make sense of musical sound) and the perceptual, cognitiveand motor skills in trained musicians.

John Westcombe taught music in Inner London before taking advisoryand music direction posts in three large LEAs. More recently, consultancywork has been done for Trinity College of Music and Youth Music.Current interests include concert reviewing and Chairing the BritishDyslexia Association Music Committee. Heinemann published hisCareers in Music (1997).

*Siw Wood was considered ‘too hopeless at spelling’ to go to secretarialcollege, but in fact trained at art college. She reports that dyslexia has hada huge influence on her life. Her jobs have included dental nurse, wardorderly, farm worker, PR official in a theatre, mobility assistant andchauffeur. Her main hobby is singing.

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Preface

This book is a sequel to Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors (Miles andWestcombe (eds), Whurr, London, 2001). It comprises both chapters fromsome of the contributors to the earlier book and from other musicians aswell. Those who contributed to both books are Tim Miles, JohnWestcombe and Diana Ditchfield (who are jointly the editors of thepresent book), Sheila Oglethorpe, Nigel Clarke, Michael Lea, PaulaBishop-Liebler, Annemarie Sand and Siw Wood. The new contributorsare Adam Apostoli, Margaret Howlett-Jones, Carolyn King, ChristineMcRitchie Pratt, Katie Overy, Olivia McCarthy and Lauren Stewart.Sadly, Professor Margaret (Peggy) Hubicki, a contributor to the earlierbook and a leading member of the British Dyslexia Association MusicCommittee, died early in 2006. Her sympathetic understanding of thedifficulties experienced by many dyslexic musicians has made a lastingcontribution to the field. Chapter 14 in the present book, written largelyby Annemarie, pays a warm tribute to Peggy.

We have divided the book into four sections. These are entitled‘Tackling Problems’, ‘In and Around the Classroom’, ‘Strategies andSuccesses’ and ‘Science Takes Us Forward’.

In the first chapter, Tim Miles outlines the main characteristics ofdyslexia and briefly mentions other developmental differences whichhave come to the fore in recent decades. He emphasises that the word‘difference’ is more satisfactory than such words as ‘anomaly’, ‘deficit’,‘disability’ and the like: one of the important messages of the book as awhole is to encourage teachers of dyslexic children and adults always tothink positively. In Chapter 2, Tim calls attention to some of the thingswhich can go wrong in the lives of dyslexics. They can happen to any ofus, whether dyslexic or not, but experience suggests that dyslexics are

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Preface

particularly vulnerable to such things, and it is therefore important thatteachers should know what to expect.

In Chapter 3, Christine McRitchie Pratt gives a comprehensive list ofthe visiting and school-based staff requirement regarding accessories andmaterials as well as good advice about direct help for dyslexics in theclassroom; in Chapter 4, Katie Overy provides a selection of musicalactivities and games suitable in both the music and language classroomfor both dyslexics and others. In Chapter 5, Olivia McCarthy and DianaDitchfield recall a very disruptive pupil who had severe difficulties withher short-term memory whom they gradually won over to competence inpiano playing through appropriate tuition in her early years; some of thewriting team have then pooled their thoughts, in Chapter 6, on whatmight lie behind pupils’ reluctance to involve themselves or seeminglymiss out on the pleasures of musical participation. In Chapter 7, SheilaOglethorpe calls attention to some of the many different ways in whichmusic can contribute richly, and unexpectedly, to the lives of those whoare dyslexic, and provides valuable case studies. In Chapter 8, Tim Milescalls attention to parallels between the teaching of musical notation andmathematical notation. Because symbols are involved, these notationsmay take dyslexics longer to learn, but that need not prevent them frombecoming highly successful musicians or mathematicians. DianaDitchfield, in Chapter 9, acknowledges that some young musicians havefound it frustrating that, at least to find a way through the examinationsystem, theory has to be learned and written questions answered, andwelcomes the role of technology in these matters.

Next come two contributions on sight-reading, written from somewhatdifferent angles. The chapter by Sheila Oglethorpe (Chapter 10) containsa wealth of practical advice; that by Michael Lea (Chapter 11) reports thathe found memorisation when playing the guitar easier and sight-readingeasier when playing the cello or double bass. He offers an ingeniousneurological explanation for this based on a diagram: the corticalhomunculus devised by the neurologist Wilder Penfield.

For Chapter 12, there is a straightforward setting-out of good advicefrom Nigel Clarke, who has needed to be very resourceful and press onagainst difficulties, and, in Chapter 13, there is an even-handed view,from Adam Apostoli, about how far music has been embraced by thetechnological age (and vice versa).

Chapter 14 relates a remarkable sequence that has a strong triangularfeel about it in terms of the personalities involved, the transference ofteaching expertise and the reversal of fortune. In Chapter 15, PaulaBishop-Liebler’s illustrates by means of case studies the variety of skillswhich dyslexic singers need to accumulate according to the type of music

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Preface

which they wish to perform, whether, for instance, it be jazz, baroque ormusic for the theatre.

In Chapter 16, we hope to catch the eye in our movement betweengroups of musicians with ‘Thirty-seven oboists’. Here, Carolyn Kingdescribes her experiences in teaching and assessing a large cohort ofoboists, some but not all of whom were dyslexic. Then Jenny Macmillan,in Chapter 17, draws attention to ways in which the Suzuki influence isanalogous to styles of teaching of dyslexics, not least in the matter ofnotation not being an essential part of that method’s initial engagements,and the words ‘structured’, ‘sequential’ and ‘cumulative’ are sharedvocabulary. In Chapter 18, Nigel Clarke’s successes in both leadership ofa conservatoire department and as a distinguished composer in the worldof film-making demonstrate that success can be achieved and problemsovercome.

In Chapter 19, Katie Overy briefly describes some of the latestbrain-imaging techniques; she then outlines some research findings onthe aural basis of music processing, the brain differences associated withmusical training and the brain differences associated with dyslexia. InChapter 20, Lauren Stewart provides an analysis of the various skillsrequired for successful sight-reading; then, as a sequel to Katie’s chapter,she reports on some of the studies by herself and colleagues on what hasbeen discovered about music skills from the use of brain-imagingtechniques.

Amongst the main chapters, three cameos will be found, two byindividuals and the third by various hands. They serve to demonstratethe individual nature of responses to dyslexia for both young people andadults, and what teachers need to look out for.

We express our gratitude to the British Dyslexia Association forsupport of the Music Committee in past years. We would also like to takethis opportunity to thank Joanna Westcombe for her help with the earlydrafts of this book.

Tim Miles, John Westcombe and Diana Ditchfield

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JWBK205-Miles JWBK205-01 November 7, 2007 21:54

Section I

Tackling problems



one

Dyslexia and otherdevelopmental

differencesTim Miles

Introduction

I shall start this chapter by describing briefly some of the maincharacteristics of dyslexia. I shall then mention other developmentaldifferences which may be relevant in the classroom in general and toteachers of music in particular. I shall end with a brief word aboutdiagnostic labels.

I have chosen to speak of ‘differences’ rather than use such terms as‘anomaly’, ‘deficit’, ‘disorder’, ‘handicap’ and the like. It is true that insociety as it exists at present dyslexics and those with other differencestend to be disadvantaged (or ‘disabled’) in certain specific ways. Themessage of this present book, however, is to encourage people to thinkpositively: it is important both that dyslexics should not undervaluethemselves and that those who teach them should encourage theirstrengths rather than be thinking only of their weaknesses. The AdultDyslexia Organisation (ADO) has suggested that we should think ofdyslexics not as disabled but as ‘differently abled’.

The nature of dyslexia

I have always thought that the most helpful way to characterise dyslexiais to say that it is a syndrome. ‘Syndrome’ is a term implying a cluster of

3Music and Dyslexia: A Positive Approach. Edited by Tim Miles, John Westcombe and Diana Ditchfield© 2008 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISBN: 978-0-470-06557-0


Music and Dyslexia

manifestations or symptoms, not necessarily identical in differentindividuals but showing an identifiable pattern.

In the great majority of cases, dyslexics are late in learning to read and,even with good teaching, are likely to remain poor spellers. In addition,most dyslexics have problems with short-term memory: if they have tolisten to a long sentence, they may understand the early part but losetrack before the end – it seems as though the amount which they can holdin mind is more limited than it is in the case of non-dyslexics. Somedyslexics show uncertainty over left and right, and a very large numberhave difficulty in learning their times tables (note 1.1).

It is now established that dyslexia has a physical (constitutional) basis,that is to say it arises from the way in which a person is made. This, ofcourse, is nothing for which anyone can be blamed. The situation can bemade worse by poor teaching or unsympathetic handling, but these arenot the original causes of the difficulties.

It is known that dyslexia runs in families, although one sometimescomes across cases where there is no evidence of other family membersbeing affected. It is almost certainly more common in males than infemales. There is not yet agreement as to the details of what causesdyslexia. A widely held view is that dyslexics have a problem withphonology, that is with the recall and ordering of speech sounds (see inparticular note 1.2). It seems likely that a major problem for mostdyslexics is that of learning the correct label to attach to speech sounds –it is a problem of verbal labelling. Speech sounds are symbols and itappears to be symbols that cause dyslexics difficulty (note 1.3). Given thatthis is so, one would expect them to have difficulty with many differentkinds of symbol, including those of mathematics and musical notation(see also Chapter 8).

If a child in your class is dyslexic, this calls for sensitivity and inparticular for an awareness of when to take note of the fact. What iscalled for is not the abandonment of standards but a willingness to adjustone’s standards so as to take into account the pupil’s individual needs. AsI shall show in Chapter 2, there are all kinds of things which may gowrong for the dyslexic.

Dyslexia takes a different form in different languages. In thoselanguages where there is regular one-to-one correspondence betweenwritten letters and their sounds, learning to read and spell is not quite theproblem that it is in English, where there are large numbers of so-calledirregular words. For instance, the English ‘yacht’ is not spelled yot and‘neighbour’ is not spelled naber. There are some languages, such asWelsh, Spanish and Italian, where there is a regular correspondence

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Dyslexia and other developmental differences

between the sounds that we speak and the letters that we write, and inthese languages learning to read is much easier.

Other developmental differences

In this section I call attention to a number of other developmentaldifferences which have come into prominence in the last few decades.They are: ADD (attention deficit disorder) and ADHD (attention deficithyperactivity disorder), dyspraxia, dyscalculia and the group ofdisorders referred to as autistic spectrum disorders (ASD). A useful termby which to refer to all differences such as these is ‘neurodiversity’.People’s nervous systems are diverse – they vary; different nervoussystems are advantageous – or handicapping – for different purposes.There is no clear association between these conditions and high or lowintelligence, and it is most important that the abilities of those showingdevelopmental differences should not be underestimated.

Many of the manifestations which I shall be describing occur in all ofus but only in a relatively mild form. The diagnostic label is appropriateonly when the problems are severe and persistent. Also one needs to bearin mind that there can sometimes be what is called ‘co-morbidity’: morethan one diagnostic description may be applicable in the case of the sameindividual, for example a number of dyslexics but by no means all ofthem are also dyspraxic.

ADD and ADHD

Those with ADD may have particular difficulty in sustainingconcentration for more than a very short period of time. Written workmay give the impression of being disorganised and carelessly puttogether. Tasks may sometimes be abandoned before they have beencompleted.

In the case of ADHD, there is the additional complication ofhyperactivity – continual restlessness. The person with ADHD fidgetsand finds it difficult to sit still. In the case of both ADD and ADHD, theindividual is liable to act on impulse without adequate consideration ofthe consequences. Impulsivity may manifest itself in impatience and indifficulty in delaying responses until questions have been completed. It

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Music and Dyslexia

may lead to accidents, for instance knocking objects over, bumping intopeople or impetuously grabbing a hot pan without working out that onewill be burned. There may sometimes be engagement in potentiallydangerous activities without consideration of what might be theconsequences. It is possible that the condition sometimes runs in families,but, as in the case of dyslexia, this is far from being universal.

Dyspraxia

The essential feature of dyspraxia is, of course, poor motor co-ordination.In the case of children, it is sometimes known as ‘developmentalco-ordination disorder’ (DCD) or as ‘the clumsy child syndrome’. Thispoor motor control may lead to other effects – problems over accurateperception, speech difficulties, untidy handwriting, disorganisedplanning and sometimes slowness in retrieving information from print.Manifestations of dyspraxia are sometimes found among dyslexics, butthis is relatively infrequent.

Dyscalculia

There is no agreement as to whether dyscalculia should be regarded as adistinct and separate syndrome or whether its manifestations are all partof the dyslexic syndrome.

There is no doubt, however, that severe and persistent problems witharithmetical calculation can regularly be found. Among them are a verysmall number who have few or no literacy problems. If these arevariations within the dyslexia syndrome, then it would seem that somewidening of the dyslexia concept is called for, so that it would be properto call a person ‘dyslexic’ even in the absence of any severe reading orspelling problems.

On the other side of the coin, so to speak, there are very few dyslexicswithout any calculation problems. In my own research (Miles, 1993)I found that about 90% of the dyslexics whom I assessed could not recitethe six-times, seven-times and eight-times tables without stumbling;and it seems common sense to suppose that dyslexics’ difficultieswith symbolic material should extend to mathematical symbols.

To complicate matters, there appear to be a small number ofindividuals who are impaired in their ability to reason mathematically,for example with matrices and block design tests, which the typicaldyslexic can manage adequately.

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One of the problems in this whole area is to know where to ‘lump’ andwhere to ‘split’, that is where to classify manifestations together asconstituting the same syndrome (‘lumping’) and where to treat them asseparate (‘splitting’). Because of co-morbidity between syndromes, thewhole situation is very untidy from the theoretical point of view.Provided there is careful examination of individual needs, however, thistheoretical untidiness need not have an adverse effect on practice.Hopefully, advances in neurology will throw further light on thetheoretical side.

Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD)

The main characteristic of autism is impaired communication withothers. Those who are autistic are not easily able to understand the pointof view of others and, as a consequence, they may be deficient in socialskills. They may also be restricted in their use of eye-to-eye contact andmay not easily be able to ‘read’ the significance of other people’s gesturesand bodily movements. Some of them may have an interest in formingfriendships but these may not always be maintained; this may be due totheir inability to understand other people’s needs. Some autistic peoplehave a restricted repertoire of activities and interests and keep returningto the same routines without attempting anything new.

Asperger’s syndrome is thought to be a less severe form of autism –and again manifests itself in the inability to see the other person’s point ofview. Some of those with Asperger’s syndrome are liable to miss out onthe subtleties of language and take what is said entirely literally. One ofthe leaflets of the Asperger’s Society describes someone whomisinterpreted the expression ‘She bit my head off’. I myself had thefollowing two experiences: a student told me that he had recentlyphotocopied a number of pages from a library book. I was unsure of thecopyright regulations and wished to make clear that I did not wish to beassociated with what he had done. I therefore said, ‘I am rather deaf.’With a look of concern on his face the student said, ‘Oh, I am so sorry.’ Incontrast another student, who had none of these developmentaldifferences, asked if she could attend one of my lectures even though atthe time she was not registered as a student. It would have been churlishto refuse, but to cover myself I mischievously said, ‘I am rathershort-sighted.’ She got the message and attended the lecture. A fewweeks later, wanting to attend another of my lectures, she came up to meand asked, ‘Are you short-sighted again this morning?’

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Music and Dyslexia

On the use of diagnostic labels

One sometimes hears it said that it is wrong to label children, whether asdyslexic, dyspraxic or anything else. I have never been able to subscribeto this view.

The correct diagnosticlabel is essential if the individual concerned is to be adequately helped.If correct diagnostic labels are not used, teachers are more than likelyto act upon their own incorrect ones. I remember one occasion whenan official said at a meeting on dyslexia, ‘We don’t label children’ – andwas greeted by an indignant mother who said, ‘My son prefers the label“dyslexic” to the label “dumbo”.’ This provoked thunderous applause.

We should always remember, however, that, although those who carrya particular diagnostic label may have much in common, their needs maybe different, particularly at different times of their lives. Within thosewho carry a particular diagnostic label there should never be aone-size-fits-all treatment.

Notes

Note 1.1. For further documentation of these claims the reader may wish toconsult Miles (1993) and Miles (2006).

Note 1.2. For further discussion of the significance of phonological deficits indyslexia see Snowling (2000) and Snowling and Hulme (2006).

Note 1.3. A colleague, Professor Nick Ellis, devised an ingenious series ofexperiments which suggested that if non-symbolic material werepresented dyslexics performed no worse than controls. What he didwas to adapt for use with dyslexics a procedure which had beendevised independently by a psychologist named Posner. In ourexperiment the subjects were dyslexic and control children agedbetween 10 and 15 years. The stimuli were pairs of letters of thealphabet. The task was to press one key if the members of the pair werethe same and to press another key if they were different. Sometimes thestimuli were two upper-case letters, for example OO, RR (same) or OB,RM (different); this was termed the ‘visual match’ condition.Sometimes, however, a capital letter was placed alongside a lower-caseletter, for instance Bb, Mm (same) or Ba, Mb (different); this wasreferred to as the ‘name match’ condition. It was found that in the

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visual match condition the dyslexic subjects were not significantlyslower than the controls in making the decision but that they wereconsistently slower in the name match condition. The order ofmagnitude was not all that great (between a tenth and a fifth of asecond) but it held up consistently. A brief summary of this researchwill be found in Miles (2006, pp. 78–79). A similar difference insubjects’ responses to symbolic and non-symbolic material was foundin the Kannada language (Miles, 2006, pp. 88–89).

Note 1.4. A brief account of ADHD, Asperger’s syndrome and dyspraxia will befound in Du Pre et al. (2007, Chapter 2). For those interested inneurodiversity, the BRAIN HE project, led by David Pollack at deMontford University, Leicester, aims to provide thorough andup-to-date information from organisations which supportneurodiversity in all its different forms. In this connection seewww.brainhe.com.

Further information

Overviews of the dyslexia field will be found in Thomson (1991) and in Miles andMiles (1999). Other information relevant to this chapter will be found in Miles(2004), which is an edited book on the stresses experienced by many dyslexics,and in Miles and Miles (2004), which is an edited book on the mathematicaldifficulties experienced by dyslexics. Accounts of the many ways in whichdyslexia affects the lives of musicians will be found in Miles and Westcombe(2001).

The Bangor Dyslexia Test (Miles, 1997) is available on the open market fromLearning Development Aids, Duke Street, Wisbech, Cambs PE13 2AE. This testwas used by Carolyn King (see Chapter 16) in testing 37 oboists, some of whomwere showing clear signs of dyslexia.

Dyslexic teenagers or dyslexic adults who are considering going into highereducation may like to consult Du Pre et al. (2007). Those interested in researchstudies may wish to consult Dyslexia: An International Journal of Research andPractice, published by John Wiley & Sons (Chichester), and Annals of Dyslexia,published by the International Dyslexia Association, Chester Building Suite382, 8600 LaSalle Road, Baltimore MD 21285-2044, USA.

For advice on dyslexia, readers may like to write to the Adult DyslexiaAssociation, 336 Brixton Road, London SW9 7AA, to the British DyslexiaAssociation, 98 London Road, Reading RG1 5AU and/or to Dyslexia Action,Wick House, Park Road, Egham, Surrey TW20 0HH. The address of theNational Autistic Society is: 393 City Road, London EC4 1NE.

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Music and Dyslexia

References

Du Pre, E.A., Gilroy, D.E. and Miles, T.R. (2007) Dyslexia at College (3rd edn),RoutledgeFalmer, London.

Miles, T.R. (2006) Fifty Years in Dyslexia Research, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester.Miles, T.R. (ed) (2004) Dyslexia and Stress (2nd edn), Whurr, London.Miles, T.R. (1997) The Bangor Dyslexia Test, Learning Development Aids, Wisbech,

Cambs.Miles, T.R. (1993) Dyslexia: The Pattern of Difficulties, Whurr, London.Miles, T.R. and Miles, E. (eds) (2004) Dyslexia and Mathematics, RoutledgeFalmer,

London.Miles, T.R. and Miles, E. (1999) Dyslexia: A Hundred Years On (2nd edn), Open

University Press, Ballmoor, Bucks.Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (eds) (2001) Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,

Whurr, London.Snowling, M.J. (2000) Dyslexia (2nd edn), Blackwell, Oxford.Snowling, M.J. and Hulme, C. (2006) The Science of Reading: A Handbook,

Blackwell, Oxford.Thomson, M.E. (1991) Developmental Dyslexia (3rd edn), Whurr, London.

10

JWBK205-Miles JWBK205-02 October 31, 2007 7:34

two

Things that cango wrong

Tim Miles

Introduction

All of us will have experienced mishaps and embarrassments at varioustimes in our lives. I should like to suggest, however, that in this respectdyslexics are particularly vulnerable. The descriptions in this chapterrange from minor mishaps to serious embarrassments. I cannot promisethat every episode took place exactly as I describe them here, but they areall the kinds of thing that can occur particularly in the lives of dyslexics.

The obvious problems of the dyslexic are well known – the frustrationswhen they first go to school and find that other members of the class areso much more successful than they are at deciphering those unintelligiblemarks on paper which others call ‘writing’.

Quite apart from such things, however, there are many mishaps – notnecessarily anyone’s fault – which nevertheless may causeembarrassment and sometimes hurt. Dyslexia affects all aspects of life,not just reading and spelling. The following are some examples.

Social situations

A dyslexic adult whom I assessed told me that he had been invited to aparty where he knew that they would play word games (solvinganagrams etc.). He also knew that he would not be able to cope; so heexcused himself from joining in by appearing with his arm in a sling and



Music and Dyslexia

saying that he could not write because he had broken his wrist. What hehad forgotten was that some six months earlier, with the same group ofpeople, he had produced the same excuse. When he now used it on thissecond occasion, great was his embarrassment when his hostess said tohim in surprise: ‘What? Have you broken your wrist again?’ He told mehe felt a complete fool.

A number of us were enjoying a humorous cartoon. In the cartoonsome police officers were approaching a building and the captionunderneath said: ‘He’s got a gnu’ – and a picture showed a man and agnu side by side. A dyslexic member of our party said: ‘I don’t see whatis funny. Why is “He’s got a gun” funny?’ We had to explain that she hadmisread what was in fact the word ‘gnu’. I blamed myself for notforeseeing the embarrassment which this misreading might cause.

Another dyslexic adult had had to give up playing darts. The reason:he was slow at calculating, and this became an embarrassment when hismates knew instantly what number he needed for his next throw but hehimself needed time to work the sum out.

A successful dyslexic businessman had been honoured by beingappointed Chairman of the Guild. At the initiation ceremony hesuddenly heard the words: ‘I call on our new chairman to read the rulesof the guild.’ He knew he was incapable of reading aloud, and, pleadingillness, he went off home and did not dare to face the members of theguild again. They, in their turn, considered that he had treated them withextreme discourtesy.

A dyslexic adult was working in an office where there was always alarge amount of noise. This noise prevented him from concentrating. Atfirst, when he asked to be moved to a quieter room, his employer thoughthe was just being tiresome, while a fellow employee complained that itwas wrong that he should receive some special treatment not given to hisworkmates. Only when it was explained that some dyslexics cannoteasily work during a buzz of conversation was it appreciated that therequest was a reasonable one.

‘Left’ and ‘right’

A dyslexic child brought up as a Roman Catholic regularly needed tocross herself. This, of course, involved combining getting the ordercorrect with remembering which was ‘right’ and which was ‘left’; shetold me that she found this very difficult.

12


Things that can go wrong

I have assessed several children who, according to their parents, foundit difficult to put the knives, forks and spoons in the correct place whenlaying the table. If one has been told that the fork goes on the left, it is stillnecessary to know not only which is the fork – no difficult task on its ownfor a dyslexic of sufficient age – but which side is the ‘left’. This againappears to be a case of having to remember too many things at the sametime.

On one occasion slowness in working out ‘left’ and ‘right’ had seriousconsequences. A medical student was taking an examination where thequestions were multiple choice. The examination was timed, and theinstructions were that if X is true tick the box on the right, and if Y is truetick the box on the left. This student assured me that he knew all theanswers: he failed the examination because he completed only half thequestions – chiefly because of the time it took him to work out which boxwas ‘right’ and which was ‘left’. Thus a potentially able doctor was lost tothe medical profession.

Time management

A headmaster arranged to see one of his dyslexic pupils at 11.30 a.m. Thedyslexic pupil, however, mistook the time and turned up for theappointment at 11 a.m. There was no sign of the headmaster. He waitedfor 20 minutes and then, deciding that the headmaster was not coming,walked away. The headmaster duly appeared at 11.30 and was far frompleased when he found that the boy did not arrive at 11.30.

I am told that, in the past, if a young man on probation failed to keepan appointment with his probation officer severe penalties routinelyfollowed. It is now recognised that a dyslexic who is on probation maymiss an appointment not because of unwillingness to co-operate butsimply because of a deficient sense of time.

There are times when the behaviour of a dyslexic makes one reallyindignant. Here is an account of something which I experienced at firsthand. A 13-year-old girl had been receiving tuition from one of ourDyslexia Unit teachers. Her family were very short of money, and I hadarranged for her to receive some financial help from our (veryimpoverished) hardship fund. Picture my dismay and indignation whenher teacher told me that on the last two occasions she had beenthree-quarters of an hour late for her lesson. Not surprisingly, I wasfurious: considering that the girl was being paid for out of our scarce

13


Music and Dyslexia

funds, surely she ought to have the common courtesy to turn up on time?However, I happened to be around on the day when she was next due tohave her lesson – and she arrived half an hour early. Then the pennydropped, and I suggested to her teacher that she should teach the girl totell the time!

Travelling

A famous actor had been asked to attend a play reading. He lost his wayand failed to turn up on time. The other actors, not knowing that he wasdyslexic, supposed he was too arrogant to take the trouble to turn up ontime. He reported to me that, once the nature of his dyslexia had beenexplained to him, he ‘felt forgiven’.

A dyslexic adult wanted to visit the British Museum. There was, in fact,a sign to it nearby which she had not noticed. She therefore asked apasser-by for directions. He turned to her rather angrily and said: ‘Whycan’t you read the bloody notice?’

A dyslexic driver had been supplied with a route map; her husbandbecame very cross at her slowness in orientating this map and thiscrossness caused a further confusion over ‘left’ and ‘right’.

Another dyslexic driver stopped to ask directions from a passer-by. Theanswer was given at great speed – as it might be: ‘Second turn on the left;then go on for 200 yards until you come to the church and then turnright. . . ’ – by which time the driver was so confused that he couldremember nothing.

Another dyslexic, because of her uncertainty over ‘left’ and ‘right’, haddevised a compensatory strategy: ‘turn left’ meant turn where there is noon-coming traffic; ‘turn right’ meant turning to the side where the road isclear after there has been on-coming traffic. This strategy worked wellenough – until she had to drive a car in the United States of America,where they drive on the right-hand side of the road.

There can also be problems for a dyslexic who travels by publictransport. Two dyslexic teenagers, unfamiliar with London, wanted toreach Kensington. They jumped into a tube train, which they supposed tobe going there, and later found that they had landed up at Kennington,many miles further south.

If one has to catch a train, one has to identify its time of departure interms of the 24-hour clock. This is what one dyslexic adult reported: ‘IfI’ve got to go for a train, I really struggle because I often get the numbers

14


Things that can go wrong

the wrong way round and get the train time wrong.’ Bus numbers mayalso be confusing. To quote another dyslexic adult: ‘I have to be verycareful with 6s and 9s. Certain numbers I will switch. I can see the figures42 in front of me and write them correctly, but when I speak I may say:“24”.’

Dyslexics who feel insecure in general may find their insecuritiescompounded when they have to travel. I heard recently of a dyslexicmusician who had had to travel from London to Exeter and had been toldto change at Reading. On reaching Reading, however, as a result oflistening to an announcement on a loudspeaker, she suddenly panicked,thinking she was on the wrong platform. Although she eventuallyarrived safely at Exeter, the journey had been extremely stressful.

Conclusion

It follows from all this that there are circumstances where waxingindignant is not very helpful. Once one knows that a person is dyslexic,their behaviour can sometimes be seen in a new light. The office workerwho was disturbed by noise was not just being selfish: like quite anumber of dyslexics he needed extra peace and quiet in order to functioneffectively. The actor who was considered arrogant in fact felt scared andguilty. The girl who was late for her lessons was not just being cussed orcareless – she needed to be taught how to tell the time. A positiveapproach to all happenings of this kind is likely to be more effective andto make dyslexics happier and less stressed than blaming them andfinding fault with them.

I am grateful to Helen Arkell, Sheila Oglethorpe and Deborah Lamont for supplying mewith some of the material which has been used in this chapter. For further information onthe problems experienced by dyslexics when they travel see Lamont and Lyons (2007).

Reference

Lamont, D. and Lyons, G. (2007) Understanding and Addressing Dyslexia in TravelInformation Provision. Paper 2A1.12. Published at the Universities TransportStudies Group Annual Conference.

15


Music and Dyslexia

Cameo One

Troubles with the stave?Siw Wood

In the earlier book (Miles and Westcombe, 2001), I explain that mymemory problems mean that I cannot remember note placements withoutcounting up laboriously from middle C. When I learn something, I usuallyremember it for life – no problem. However, I have never been able tomaster mnemonics, a helpful memory aid for the dyslexic, and this hasbeen a problem.

I also said that God having made me dyslexic, He was also kind andmade me a top soprano; so I don’t have to fight my way through the jungleof the stave to read my line.

Recently, at an opera course, I was given a second soprano part by an un-sympathetic assistant director. The only way I could learn this was to enlargethe pages to A3, white out the German words, highlight the English wordsand finally white out the first soprano’s notes. All my life, I’ve sung ‘first’!

In a mad moment I bought a small Celtic harp, with the hope of learningto accompany folk songs in a like-minded group. I found the technique ofplaying not that hard and was helped by the Cs being red and the Fs black,together with the right-hand/treble-clef relationship at least beingfamiliar. However, having to unravel the bass-clef/left-hand mysteriesmeant that I had to spend so much time struggling with that, that Icouldn’t get the fingers to complete the sequence.

At the moment, I can’t afford lessons, and am thinking of swappingteachers to one who will teach the traditional Welsh aural method, wherethe good ear virtually removes the necessity for fluency in readingnotation. But I may still have problems.

Some people ask whether I dance. I may learn the first two or threesequences, but add four and five, and one and two have fled my brain.

I do hope that this doesn’t happen to my harp playing.Wish me luck!

Reference

Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (eds) (2001) Music and Dyslexia: Opening NewDoors, Whurr, London.

16


Section II

In and around theclassroom



three

In and around theclassroom

Christine McRitchie Pratt

The music room can be a rewarding place when things go well, but theywill not always go well. This chapter is divided into two parts. The firstpart introduces some strategies that may help the dyslexic student (ofany age!) when things go awry. The second part is made up of severallists that teachers might find helpful when teaching dyslexic students.

Singing

Most schools provide their pupils with an opportunity to sing, even if it isjust singing hymns in assembly (and that often to a CD). Place thedyslexic pupil in the front row and next to a good strong singer. If anoverhead projector or PowerPoint is being used, ensure that the text isclear, the verses are clearly numbered and that verse and chorus areclearly delineated, and use a coloured background wherever possible. Ifthe student can have their own copy, possibly on coloured paper, wellspaced and with a larger font, so much the better. Read the wordsthrough with everyone first and explain any anomalies (for exampleold-fashioned language or abbreviations).

Board work/worksheets�There is a place for ‘chalk and talk’. Use different colours for differentlines or ideas, and use bullet points. Please make sure the writing is



Music and Dyslexia

legible and that the student has a clear view of the board. Revisit allthe time.�Worksheets must be clear and uncluttered. Blue, yellow or pink papermay be preferred. Let the student choose. Choose a clear, unfussy font.

Performing using notation�Highlight a part to make it clearer. Use arrows to show change to newline. Arrow Post-its are now widely available.�Highlight a particular sequence and colour unexpected notes (e.g.accidentals) or odd fingerings, similarly with instructions(dynamics/repeats etc.). Ask the student for their choice of colour –they will feel more included.�Use musical ‘spectacles’ for ‘LOOK OUT’!�Check that the task has been understood.

Listening/watching�Make sure the dyslexic student understands the task and what theyare listening/watching out for.�Place them away from distractions.� In the case of watching a screen, position them at the front and straightin front – prime position!

In general�Differentiation is the name of the game.�Use lots of multisensory and kinaesthetic approaches and strategies.�Use clapping/human drum kit/mnemonics/aide memoires such as:Every Good Band Deserves Fans!

Always Come Early, Grandma�Organisational and timing skills are often a problem◦ suggest pupils make a credit-card size reminder of things to do◦ check that the medium-term targets are in sight, and eventually

achieved

20


In and around the classroom

◦ check that non-music matters (like the law regarding photocopying)are taken into account�Revisit frequently

◦ always err on the side of commending good work◦ let it be known that you appreciate hard work, even if it does not

always bring brilliant results� Find something the student is good at (e.g. ostinato) and make it theirspecial thing.

Always praise!

Notes for teachers:Are you ready for

the lesson?These lists are designed to help both visiting and school-based staff.Clearly, not everyone can carry everything around with them, but muchtime can be wasted through not having emergency supplies.

Before the lesson

Ensure you have:�pencils, sharpeners, erasers� coloured pencils, felt tips, highlighter pens�Post-its of different sizes and colours (for easy access to music in booksand for messages)�manuscript paper� reward stickers for all ages.

As well as:� copies of all the music and accompaniments your pupils are using�CD/tape machine (especially useful for vocal accompaniments towork with)

21


Music and Dyslexia� appropriate sight-reading and aural tests�duets and fun music.

You will also need tools of the trade, such as:� valve oil, through rosin and peg paste� spare reeds� emergency spike holders� screwdrivers and dusters.

Check your store weekly!

During the lesson�Always give a warm welcome and smile and use the pupil’s name.�Engage with your pupil; make sure that they look at you.�Check your pupil has understood each instruction – if not, repeat itand, if this does not work, come from another angle and explain it in adifferent way.�Write careful, legible and brief notes in a practice notebook at the endof every lesson – vocalise as you write and check that your pupil hasunderstood the instructions. Do not forget to put in the time, date and,if necessary, the place of the next lesson.�Practice charts can help, plus a reward system.

Please be:� consistent, interesting and interested (your lesson may be the onlyone-to-one session that the pupil has – we are in a privileged position)� lively and always make sure some music is worked on (but do not givetoo many instructions in one go).

Multisensory approaches�Even scales can be interesting: sing, hum or whistle them. Makethinking up ways for your pupil to memorise notes and fingerings fun.�Pace the patterns around the room: long step – major interval, shortstep – minor interval.�Note the arpeggio within the scale while playing (e.g. stamp a foot).

22


In and around the classroom�With the pupil, play in canon/contrary motion/thirds etc.�Use some of the patterns from the Associated Board jazz syllabus.�Look at the title of the piece and ask your pupil to describe the feelingit should have (e.g. happy/sad/marching/dancing).�Younger pupils will enjoy making the appropriate faces or sounds ontheir instruments.�Ask your pupil to make an illustration of the title.�Ask what colours they see in the music – add these to the copy if ithelps.�Check that all instructions given at the start of the music areunderstood. If not, illustrate them physically (within reason!) and askyour pupil to do the same and to highlight them (I still remember mywonderful trumpet teacher walking round the room in a steadfastmanner to give the idea of andante – I still do it today).�Check that all other instructions, such as repeats, 1st and 2nd timebars, da capo, dal segno, coda, general pause and volte subito areunderstood and the Italian words known. Always use colour andhighlight pens to help.�With guitars and keyboards, it may help to highlight chord sequencesand patterns (this also applies to stringed instruments when usingdifferent positions). Always ask your pupil to choose the colour and,when time permits, let them do the inscribing themselves.

Be aware that there may be:�difficulties with sorting out left or right hands (which hand do youwrite with? – no problem if it is with the right; otherwise, a trendyarmband may help); do not insist on dealing with left and right if ‘thishand’ and ‘that hand’ will achieve the same results�problems with fingering – pianists and harpists use five fingers oneach hand numbered from one to five, the thumb being one, whilemost other instruments use thumb plus one, two, three and four; useother terminology, such as ‘little finger’ (the ‘pinkie’ in the UnitedStates) or ‘ring finger’, until confidence is gained�misunderstanding with instructions for higher and lower, particularlywith a stringed instrument; similarly with instructions for up and down.

Don’t forget: black on white glares�Photocopy onto pale-coloured paper, such as yellow, pink and blue,and work with the colour your pupil finds makes the notes the clearest.�Enlarge if necessary.

After all that, learning the music is easy!

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Music and Dyslexia

The voice�Very few children are tone deaf; they have just not had the help theyneed. They can all talk!�Work from a note your pupil can home in on and then graduallyextend in both directions.� Illustrate intervals and, later, letter names using the beginnings ofwell-known songs (1–2, Happy Birthday, 1–5, Twinkle, Twinkle, LittleStar).�Always do a vocal warm-up, using movement if possible. Whenteaching new music, use call and response and always teach thechorus before the verse.

Getting a sense of rhythm and timing:not so easy!�Ask pupils to clap to tunes they know. Start with clapping on the first

beat, then second and so on.� Similarly, ask them to stamp or vocalise using the same pattern.�Put all the patterns together to make a human drum-kit (e.g. 1. stamp,2. clap, 3. click fingers, 4. shout).�Use popular words and phrases to help with rhythm patterns (e.g.Olympic Games, Manchester United, Panathaniakos – Greek footballteam, good for six-eight!); words like ‘strawberry’ and ‘hippopotamus’work well for ornaments.

Dealing with problems outside theclassroom�These may be with other pupils or at home.�The one-to-one ratio enjoyed by music staff may mean they are the

first to notice unusual behaviour or tension.� Schools have procedures for dealing with pupils going through a badpatch.�Who you pass this concern on to will depend on the nature of youremployment in the school.

24


In and around the classroom

After the lesson�Log continuing problems (coming late or without instrument) but alsoachievements.� If there are consistent problems, talk to the appropriate staff member.� If there are obvious difficulties either with reading music or physically,there may well be dyslexic or dyspraxic tendencies, but perhaps theyjust need an eye test!

However:�not all dyslexics have problems reading music�many non-dyslexics do; so we must teach accordingly� it will be important to separate the possibility of difficulty withnotation from that of suitability of instrument� the teacher must ask themselves: is the instrument the right one for thechild (see Chapter 6).

It has been well said that if your pupil does not learn the way youteach, you must teach in the way they learn.

Music is for life. It must be purposeful, rewarding and fun!

25


four

Classroom rhythmgames for literacy

supportKatie Overy

Introduction

It is increasingly recognised that engagement with music can support theacquisition of language skills. This chapter describes a collection ofmusical games designed specifically for dyslexic children and aimed atphonological development. The activities focus on auditory and motortiming skills and are intended for small groups of children, but can bedeveloped and adapted for other circumstances as appropriate. In asmall-scale research study, the games were found to lead toimprovements in rhythm skills, phonological skills and spelling skills.

Music and language

Music and language are very different kinds of human communication,used for very different purposes. However, there are also some strikingsimilarities between music and language, since both communicate viacomplex, highly structured and culturally specific sequences of auditoryunits, both take place in time, and thus require sustained attention andmemory in order to process and interpret incoming information, and bothdevelop naturally in infants but require hundreds of hours of training inorder to achieve literacy. Considering these shared characteristics, it isperhaps not surprising to learn that abilities in music and language havebeen found to correlate or that trained musicians have been found to



Classroom rhythm games for literacy support

show strengths in verbal skills (for example Slevc and Miyake, 2006; Chanet al., 1998). Recent neuroscience research has even shown that music andlanguage employ shared brain regions (see Chapter 20, this volume).

Such research findings lend strong support to claims from practitionersthat music can have a positive influence on children’s language skills.Music educators, for example, have suggested that singing is aparticularly valuable tool in the language classroom and music therapistshave advocated the use of singing for children with language disabilities(for example Kolb, 1996; Sutton, 1995). Meanwhile, developmentalpsychologists have noted the sing-song nature of infant-directed speechand the universality of infant-directed singing, suggesting these may beextremely important in the development of human language skills (forexample Trevarthen, 1999). This range of anecdotal and experimentalevidence is compelling in its variety and suggests that dyslexic childrenmight also benefit from musical experience.

Dyslexia and timing

Dyslexia, of course, presents a special case of language disability, theprecise nature and cause of which remain under intense investigationand discussion. Particular difficulties with phonological skills are wellestablished, but there are many theories as to why these difficulties occur.Examining this literature from a musical perspective, it is interesting tonote that there is a strong emphasis on temporal processing deficits andtiming deficits, particularly in the auditory and motor domains. Forexample, studies have found that dyslexia can affect the rapid temporalprocessing of auditory stimuli, the rapid naming of pictures, judgingwhether a tone is longer or shorter than a previous tone, rhythmic fingertapping and detecting the rhythmic stress patterns of speech (for exampleTallal et al., 1993; Nicolson et al., 1995; Wolf and Bowers, 2000; Goswamiet al., 2002). Musical timing skills have also often been noted as a potentialarea of difficulty, both by experimental psychologists and by musiceducators (for example Oglethorpe, 1996; Overy, 2003).

Interestingly, there are also indications that emphasising the temporalaspects of language might be useful for dyslexic children. For example, ithas been shown that spelling performance can be improved by learningto tap out the number of syllables in a word and that auditory trainingusing slowed-down speech stimuli can lead to improved phonologicalskills (Habib et al., 2002). Blythe (1998) proposes that singing is a naturalway of slowing down speech signals and suggests that singing is

27


Music and Dyslexia

beneficial for dyslexic children. It is also well established that children’sknowledge of nursery rhymes (involving rhythmic singing) is stronglyrelated to their phonological awareness (MacLean et al., 1987). Suchfindings suggest that the development of rhythm skills and singing skillsmight be valuable elements of musical training for dyslexic children.

Developing a musical activitiesprogramme for dyslexic children

The idea that musical experience might be used to support dyslexicchildren’s language and literacy skills was originally developed in an MAdissertation and subsequently led to PhD research focusing on the role ofmusical timing skills (Overy, 1997, 2002). Throughout the course of thisresearch, a primary aim became the development of a programme ofmusical activities designed especially for dyslexic children, based onrhythm games and singing games and taking dyslexia-related strengthsand weaknesses into account. It was proposed that such a programmewould focus on specific problem areas such as musical timing whileallowing for potential difficulties with concentration, sequencing, motorco-ordination and memorisation. In addition, particular attention wouldbe given to techniques known to be important for dyslexic children, suchas multisensory learning, carefully staged skill development and regularrepetition.

In order to design such a programme, a number of differentapproaches to music education, music therapy and literacy support wereexamined, such as Johansen Sound Therapy (Johansen, 2000) andLadders to Literacy (O’Connor et al., 1998). Finally, three different musiceducation approaches were selected for more thorough investigation:Growing with Music (Stocks and Maddocks, 1992), Education ThroughMusic (ETM) (Richards, 1977) and Earwiggo Again – Rhythm Games (Westand Holdstock, 1985). These were chosen for a variety of reasons,including their emphasis on musical learning as a positive, groupexperience for children of all abilities, their focus on musical participationrather than music listening or instrumental training, their use of activitiesthat can be led by non-specialists and for their underlying philosophieson the potential of musical engagement to lead to valuable learning inother domains. A detailed review of these methods is given below, inorder to explain the principles and influences behind the resultingmusical activities programme.

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Review of selected approachesto music education

Growing with Music

Growing with Music (Stocks and Maddocks, 1992) is a teaching methodbased on group singing and is highly influenced by the Kodaly approachto music education1. Each music lesson is centred upon one or moresongs, which are manipulated in various playful ways and then discussedusing concepts such as rhythm, pitch and form. Singing is considered avaluable tool because teachers can learn it quickly, it is cheap and easy toorganise with the minimum of disruption to the classroom and can beused to teach almost all aspects of the music curriculum. Developing alarge repertoire of songs is also considered to be a good way to developmemory skills, while the physical activities used with songs are believedto help develop co-ordination and the automatisation of skills.

The method places particular emphasis on the need for auralunderstanding of a concept before any degree of theoreticalunderstanding is attempted. This is considered crucial to the learningprocess; so a primary aim of the programme is to help children thinkabout music for themselves, with activities and discussions helpingchildren to discover concepts such as pulse, dynamics or tempo withinthe music that is familiar to them. Emphasis is also given to the carefullystructured progression from one level of understanding to the next,continually consolidating what has already been learned.

The pedagogical approach is aimed at keeping the children interestedand stimulated by constantly changing the focus to different aspects ofthe song, using activities such as counting the number of phrases,counting the number of pitches or concentrating on performance aspects,such as breathing, posture and dynamics. In addition, a song is oftenbroken up into sections so that smaller groups of children or even soloistscan sing to each other. Solo singing is treated as an ordinary activity, andis expected in every child, often incorporated into games so that the childis not conscious of their individual exposure.

1 The Kodaly approach to music education was developed in Hungary in the1950s, and has since been adapted in more than 50 different countries around theworld. The approach is based on classroom singing of folk songs and classicalmusic, and has a highly structured curriculum that leads very quickly to musicalliteracy. It has often been reported that this approach leads to improvements inother areas of the school curriculum, including language skills (e.g. Hurwitz et al.,1975).

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Music and Dyslexia

In many respects then, Growing with Music is very appropriate fordyslexic children. It uses simple songs that everyone can enjoy togetherregardless of ability, and yet it focuses on the detailed, repetitive andexplicit teaching of musical concepts and skills. It also shifts the focus ofattention frequently between short but related activities, allowing eventhose with short attention spans to stay interested and involved. Inaddition, it places a large emphasis on ensuring aural understandingbefore introducing new terminology, and it involves many physicalactivities, which are good for motor skill development as well as simpleenergy release and relaxation.

Education Through Music

Education Through Music (ETM) (Richards, 1977) is an approach toprimary education developed in California by Mary Helen Richards,after she visited Hungary and was inspired by discussions with ZoltanKodaly. The basic premise of the approach is that musical song gamescan provide a medium for the development and enhancement of bothpersonal skills and learning skills. It is believed that, through a blend ofmusic, movement, thinking and interaction, the children can ‘enhancetheir natural learning process’, heighten their perceptual awareness andincrease their attention span, while improving their social awareness,interaction skills and self-confidence. Specific emphasis is placed on thedevelopment of perceptual skills, attention, eye–hand motor skills,general gross- and fine-motor skills, problem-solving, analysing anddecision-making, along with turn-taking, sharing, listening, discussingand laughing.

The pedagogical philosophy of ETM is to let a child’s natural curiosity,motivation, behaviour and stage of learning development take the lead.The concept of ‘play’ is considered crucial to the learning process, as itallows children to think, experiment and create in a relaxed,non-judgemental environment. The children are not taught in atraditional classroom way; they are taught in a quasi-playground waythat is considered to be a more natural learning process and more likelyto lead to genuine interest and concentration. The teacher or leader singsthe song and explains the game and then the song is repeated while thegame is played. The children slowly pick up the song and join inspontaneously, as their motivation dictates. No child is ever told to sing,they are only invited to join in the game, often through turn-taking.Non-participation is accepted, and thus it is the leader’s responsibility toensure that the activities are interesting, so that the children want to be

30



involved. Many activities involve asking the children for their own ideas(such as choosing an action for a particular word in a song), whichencourages them to participate.

The advantages of this method for dyslexic children are self-evident:the relaxed and supportive learning environment, the value placed oneveryone’s contribution, the opportunities for creativity and theemphasis on motor auditory co-ordination, which is often combined withvisual activities (such as drawing a pattern to a song). By observing ETMsessions conducted with children who had never experienced thembefore, I was able to witness the changing behaviour of certain children inthe group, as a result of the musical games and activities. For example,those who were less able and perhaps less comfortable in a group slowlybecame more confident and involved, contributing more often and morehappily. Meanwhile, the children who were initially attention-seeking,over-talkative or disruptive gradually learned to take their turn, listen toothers and take an interest in their contribution, while thoroughlyenjoying the limelight when it came to their turn. The genuine sense ofplayfulness combined with the lack of fear of being wrong seemed verypowerful, and musical involvement and development were quick toappear.

Earwiggo

Earwiggo (West and Holdstock, 1984, 1985) is a collection of booklets ofsongs and musical games produced by the Yorkshire and HumbersideAssociation for Music in Special Education (YHAMSE). Musical expertiseis not considered necessary to lead the music sessions; enthusiasm isemphasised as the most important quality to bring to any musicalactivity. Throughout Yorkshire and Humberside, YHAMSE organisesmeetings, workshops and courses for people who are involved withchildren with learning difficulties (such as teachers and parents), alongwith workshops and music festivals for the children themselves.

There are five booklets in the Earwiggo collection, each of which dealswith a different aspect of musical skill: Listening Games, Rhythm Games,Pitch Games, Chord Book and Note Book. The activities described in thebooklets were developed by the authors through playing the games withclasses of children with learning difficulties. Each booklet begins withvery simple activities and gradually moves to more advanced games thatrequire more co-ordination and concentration. The activities arerecommended as particularly suitable for children with special needs, butare also adaptable to cater for larger numbers of infant or junior classes.

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Music and Dyslexia

Many of the activities from Earwiggo Again – Rhythm Games areparticularly suited for dyslexic children, since they are designed forchildren who do not pick up rhythms naturally. They begin withextremely simple activities, which are usually incorporated into games inorder to make them interesting and enjoyable. The activities are alsodesigned to be flexible, allowing the leader to develop their own versionsof each game, according to the needs of a particular group of children.Beginning with simple games allows children to enjoy a great deal ofsuccess, which can quickly lead to confidence, enthusiasm and a greaterwill to concentrate on more complex activities. Many useful activitieswere taken from Earwiggo for use in the beginning stages of the musicalactivities programme.

Design of the Musical ActivitiesProgramme

Aims

While the ultimate goal of the musical activities programme was tosupport the development of language and literacy skills, the moreimmediate aim was, of course, to improve musical skills, and particularlymusical timing skills. Thus, the design of the programme was centred onselecting musical games that would enable dyslexic children to overcomeany musical difficulties and become comfortable with fluent, sharedmusical experiences, paving the way for more advanced musicallearning. In order to achieve this, consideration was given to the wealthof ideas from the music education methods described above, in additionto the literature described at the opening of this chapter. The resultingfocus of the programme is summarised below.

Musical materials and approach� rhythm games and song games� actions requiring well-timed physical co-ordination�progression from short activities to longer activities� regular repetition, with slight developments�progression from extremely simple to more complex activities� encouragement of individual performance

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Musical aims� listening carefully� singing in time with other singers� tapping with the pulse of a song� tapping with the rhythm of a song� keeping in time with other musicians�discriminating between different rhythmic patterns� copying a rhythmic pattern� automatising all of the above skills

Non-musical aims�playful, enjoyable, shared musical experiences� serious concentration and effort� comfortable contributions with no fear of embarrassment�personal appreciation of own abilities and ideas

Conducting the games

The initial employment of the musical activities programme was as partof an intervention study examining its potential effect on language andliteracy skills. However, the sessions were always presented andconducted in the spirit of musical fun; each activity was introduced as agame and the children (aged 7 to 11) were encouraged to laugh and makejokes. Silly comments and ‘creative alternatives to the rules’ wereincorporated into the sense of fun wherever possible and in most casesthis relaxed attitude reduced the impact of any attempted bad behaviourand encouraged the children to contribute wholeheartedly andhumorously. Full attention was demanded at all times, and any talking orbehaviour unrelated to the activity was intercepted with questions orrequests related to the musical activities. As time went on, silence becameone of the rules of many of the games, with penalties for interrupting.Interruptions were always treated as outside the rules of the game, ratherthan as bad behaviour. In order to capture and keep all the children’sundivided attention, great efforts were made to keep the games moving,with no pauses.

This style of teaching demanded a great deal of flexibility, dependingon the skills, dynamics and behaviour of the group. Sometimes the

33


Music and Dyslexia

children were focused and concentrated, and during these sessions theylearned a great deal, gaining visible satisfaction from their achievements(from clapping difficult rhythms to simply enjoying the smooth runningof a musical game). On other days the children were easily distracted andless concentrated, leading to a lack of progress, frustration and silliness.Most of the activities were dependent on the co-operation of the wholegroup, which meant that just one child could interrupt the smooth flowof the lesson. However, in general this factor encouraged everyone toparticipate, with fellow students often encouraging others to co-operateand listen, in order to play the game. This group dynamic led to manypositive group experiences of shared attention and enjoyment.

One critical aspect of the programme was the decision to spend the firstfew weeks consolidating very basic rhythm skills, from which furthermusical skills could later develop. Thus, rhythmic clapping games tookimmediate priority, followed by singing games and then the introductionof percussion instruments and more complex rhythm games. Towards theend of the programme, chime bars were also introduced. Since theprogramme was intended for classroom use, none of the games involvedrunning or dancing, but the philosophy of play from ETM was retainedto as great an extent as possible. Examples of some rhythm games andhow they were conducted are described below.

Examples of rhythm games

The following selection of rhythm games draws particularly on activitiesand ideas from Earwiggo Again – Rhythm Games (West and Holdstock,1985), as discussed above.

The Name Game

It is always fun to begin group work with name games, since childrenusually like to say their own name and to have others focus on theirname. Names are also useful because they are over-familiar and are thusa good starting point for identifying the natural ‘rhythm’ of the words(that is the segmentation of the syllables).

In this game, the children sit in a circle and the leader begins arhythmic pattern, which the children copy. The pattern consists of asteady beat with actions: two claps followed by dropping the hands onthe knees and holding for a beat (Figure 4.1 below).

34



(clap clap knee clap clap knee clap clap knee clap clap knee)

Figure 4.1. The Name Game clapping pattern.

Once the pattern is going comfortably and steadily, without speedingup, the leader explains that everyone is going to say their own name inthe gaps, going around the circle. The leader then begins and the childrencopy (Figure 4.2).

(clap clap knee“Ka - tie”

clap clap knee“Er - ic”

clap clap knee“Rod”

clap clap knee)“An-ge-la”

Figure 4.2. The Name Game word pattern.

Some children may have difficulties at first trying to co-ordinate theirhand movements with their speech, and they may muddle up theclap-knee sequence, or say their name at the wrong time. This is alwaystreated as fun and a game and never as a mistake. The rest of the childrenare encouraged to keep the beat going and not be distracted by one childgetting muddled up. The children are also encouraged to take their timeand are allowed to wait for a pattern or two to go by before they say theirname, in order to concentrate fully. If children say their name without thecorrect rhythm, the leader can wait until the circle has been completedand then focus on a couple of names (still keeping the rhythm patterngoing) and have everyone say them rhythmically together.

Once the children are reasonably confident at saying their own namesat the correct moment, the leader can move on to other choices of words,such as ‘surnames’, ‘colours’, ‘drinks’ and so forth. Ideally, the rhythmicpattern should be continuous and the leader should simply suggest anew category each time the circle is completed, to which the childrenmust immediately respond (for example ‘coke’, ‘lemonade’, ‘orangejuice’, ‘gin’). This adds a huge element of fun and tension to the game, asthe children try to think of what word they are going to say, as it getscloser to their turn. The focus inevitably moves to the humour andinterest in the choice of words, while the process of learning to keep asteady beat while co-ordinating physical actions and while speakingwords rhythmically goes almost unnoticed. There is an excellentopportunity here for children to have fun and think creatively, and, astheir skills improve, the tempo of the beat can get faster and faster.

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Music and Dyslexia

.œ œ œPass the bea - ter

œpass it on,

.œ œ œ œpass the bea - ter

œ œpass it on,

5

.œ œ œpass the bea - ter

œpass it on, pass the bea - ter

œ œpass it on.

Figure 4.3. Pass the Beater.

Pass the Beater

This melody is very easy to pick up, and the words are just aboutimpossible to forget (Figure 4.3). The game also involves useful physicalactions for practising both metre and rhythm skills.

The children sit on the floor in a circle, with a drum (or woodblock orsomething similar) in the centre. The beater for the drum can be justabout anything but is preferably wooden, to make a pleasant sound as ithits the floor during the song. The leader begins by singing the song andfirmly placing a beater on the floor in front of the child to the left, the firsttime the word ‘pass’ is uttered. The children are then encouraged tocontinue to pass the beater in time with the music by placing the beater infront of the person to their left exactly on the word ‘pass’. The word ‘pass’helps the children to focus on making sure the beater hits the floor atexactly the right time, which demands good listening (in order to stay intime with everyone else) and good motor co-ordination. The resultingpercussive accompaniment to the song (caused by the beater hitting thefloor) emphasises the first beat of each bar.

When the song ends, the child who is left holding the beater is invitedinto the centre of the circle to play the drum. The leader claps individualrhythms and the child copies. This is a fun way to practise listening andrhythm copying, since most children are desperate to have a turn and tostay for as long as possible in the centre. The teacher can begin with verysimple rhythms and lead up to more complicated ones, depending on theskills of the child. If an error is made, the leader can simply repeat thesame rhythm again and again, until the child gets it correct, with no needto even comment on whether it was wrong or right. The other children inthe circle are also encouraged to listen carefully (but not to comment:only the person in the middle can make a sound).

An advantage of this song game is that the emphasis lies on passingthe beater correctly and on who will get the beater; so the children arehappy to sing, without feeling as self-conscious as they might in other

36



circumstances. From time to time, the leader can ask the children to singquietly, slowly, loudly, sadly, scarily and so forth. And, of course, as thechildren get better at the game, the tempo can increase.

Spot the Difference

This is a simple game that can be played quietly in a circle. To begin with,the leader simply claps a number of beats and the number is passedaround the circle until it gets back to the leader. The leader then changesthe number of beats and the number is passed around the circle again.The leader then selects a child to be the person to change the number ofbeats and the process continues. When everyone is able to perform theskills of copying and changing the number of beats (not necessarily easyfor everyone), one child is asked to leave the room and the leader selectsanother child to be the person to change the number of beats. The firstchild then re-enters the room and attempts to spot which person ismaking the change, while a number is passed around the circle. The focusof the game turns very quickly to the fun of choosing who will leave theroom and then spotting who has changed the beat; the children do notnotice that they are having to concentrate on their fine-motor skills andlistening skills.

This game can be kept very simple by limiting the number of beats tothree or four and keeping the tempo very steady. Alternatively, the gamecan be made more difficult by allowing any number of beats (within reason)and gradually increasing the tempo. In general, mistakes will be madethrough attempts to be too fast, which are funny and not in any way wrong.A more advanced version of the game is to use rhythms instead of numbers,which involves particularly good listening skills, as well as rhythm copyingand rhythm discrimination skills. For example, rhythm A (Figure 4.4) mightbe passed around the circle and then changed to rhythm B (Figure 4.5).

Figure 4.4. Rhythm A.

Figure 4.5. Rhythm B.

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Music and Dyslexia

÷ c ¿ ¿ ¿ ¿red, red, red, red

Figure 4.6. Red Balloons.

Rhythm Balloons

This idea can be used to lead children slowly into musical literacy. Fourred cut-out paper balloons (in the following figures, the red balloons areblack and the yellow balloons are light grey) are placed on the floor infront of the children and the leader demonstrates how to tap a steadybeat to the words ‘red, red, red, red’ (Figure 4.6).

The leader then points at the balloons in time, while the children followwith their percussion instruments (or clapping or chime bars). When thegroup is able to keep a steady beat going, without speeding up (not thateasy), the leader adds four yellow balloons to the red balloons anddemonstrates how to change the rhythm pattern for the yellows(Figure 4.7).

red, red, red, red, yel - low, yel - low, yel - low, yel - low

Figure 4.7. Red and Yellow Balloons.

38



Figure 4.8. Mixed Red and Yellow Balloons.

The children then follow on their percussion instruments, as the leaderpoints to the balloons. The pointing helps to emphasise the practice ofreading music from left to right and also helps to keep the children intime and together. The grouping of four balloons per line helps toestablish the musical feeling of four beats in a bar. When the children arecomfortable with the rhythmic difference between red and yellow and areable to keep a steady beat going, the leader moves some of the balloonsaround to create a new pattern. For example, see Figure 4.8.

This can be performed by the leader first, followed by the whole groupand then by soloists (each on a different percussion instrument, whichvaries the sound quality). The activity can continue with a variety ofdifferent combinations of red and yellow balloons, becoming as complex aspossible. Extra balloons can lead to further combinations and children cancompose their own rhythms by arranging their own patterns of balloons,which can be shared with the whole group. In time, the balloons can alsobe turned over, revealing a white underneath to indicate a rest. Additionallines of balloons can also be included, creating longer rhythms, anda variety of games can be played, with soloists, duets or with two groupswith different rhythms, for example. It is fun even just to have one group ofinstruments playing simply reds, while another group plays yellows. Thisrequires very good listening and motor co-ordination skills. Another gameis for the children to create a number of lines of balloons and for the leaderto perform the rhythm, stopping at a random point. The children have tokeep track and point to the balloon at which the leader stopped. There is, infact, no end to the potential activities, all of which are reinforcing the simplesounds of crotchets, quavers and rests, within simple rhythmic patterns.

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Music and Dyslexia

Rhythm Squares

For this activity, a cardboard square is divided into 16 smaller squaresand the children fill each small square with a red or yellow dot of theirown choice (Figure 4.9).

Figure 4.9. Rhythm Squares.

The rhythm square can then be ‘performed’ in much the same way asthe rhythm balloons are ‘performed’, either by the whole class or byindividuals or groups. The squares can also be turned around and upsidedown, to create different rhythm patterns. Children enjoy having theirown rhythm square performed by the rest of the group and perhaps thenturned upside down and performed again. Games can be created usingdifferent musical instruments, different groups of children performingdifferent colours, different lines and so forth.

One particular advantage of the rhythm square is that the children canstart to see, hear and feel some of the regular phrasing patterns in music.For example, a simple rhythmic pattern is shown in Figure 4.10 below.

The ‘same, same, different, same’ (or AABA) structure of this rhythmsquare is very typical of a great deal of folk, pop and classical music andhelps the listener to become particularly aware of the ‘different’ section.The visual pattern of the rhythm square emphasises the relationshipsbetween the different sections, heightening both auditory andkinaesthetic awareness of the regularities and irregularities.

Another advantage of the rhythm square is that different individuals orgroups of children can perform different rhythm squares at the sametime, leading to more complicated rhythmic textures. It takes a great dealof concentration and focused attention for two groups of children toperform two different rhythm squares together successfully. Both groupsmust be able to feel the beat very comfortably and must listen carefully to

40



Figure 4.10. Structured Rhythm Square.

the combined sound texture in order to stay in time. The results are veryrewarding though and there is a great deal of opportunity for thechildren and the leader to be creative in different ways. The activities alsopave the way for musical literacy, beginning with black dots and bar linesand moving on as appropriate.

Discussion

The games described above focus entirely on rhythm skills and representonly some of the games in the musical activities programme but,nevertheless, give a good representation of the type of musicalengagement that was encouraged. Overall, the procedure and specificcontent of the music lessons was quite variable, regularly adapting inaccordance with the changing needs and requests of the children. Forexample, in one lesson we ended up creating a rap version of AprilShowers (from the 1921 Broadway musical Bombo) and in another we allsang, stamped and clapped along with Queen’s We Will Rock You (1977).

Thus, the activities programme described above is in many respects awork in progress, with future classroom use required to develop andrefine it. The programme is currently being used in two primary schoolsin London, and the teacher involved has gradually selected preferredgames, added new games and identified the fact that three music sessionsper week seem to be crucial for good continuity and successful learning.

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Music and Dyslexia

Significant improvements in phonological skills have been reported sofar, with some cases of improved literacy skills.

In the original intervention study conducted as part of my PhDresearch, the musical activities were conducted three times a week for 20to 30 minutes at a time, for 15 weeks. The results of music, language andliteracy tests showed that, compared to a 15-week period with no musicalintervention (just school visits from me, with individual reading time),the children improved significantly in their rhythm skills, phonologicalskills and spelling skills. This demonstrated for the first time thatrhythm-based music lessons can help dyslexic children, and led to thedevelopment of a new theoretical model of the way in which musicalexperience can influence language skills (Overy, 2003), recentlydeveloped further in the journal Trends in Neurosciences (Tallal and Gaab,2006), as discussed in Chapter 19. However, the study was extremelysmall-scale and so further studies involving larger numbers of children ofvarious age groups, and with control interventions, will be necessary tosupport these findings.

Of course, a particular advantage of the musical activities programmeis the fact that, regardless of academic outcomes, there is an emphasis onenjoyment, fun and musical learning. Genuine interest and enjoyment arethe strongest motivation for children to concentrate and lead to thegreatest development in skills. Positive experiences also take the focusaway from any difficulties children might be encountering at school. Theprogramme is also very flexible, since it was designed to be adaptable tothe skills and needs of different children in different circumstances, ratherthan requiring the children to conform to and achieve pre-determinedprocedures and tasks. This flexibility is particularly important fordyslexic children, whose skills vary considerably not only betweenchildren but also from day to day.

Another important aspect of the music programme is the fact that itsdesign was based on a combination of theory, research and practice. Thethree music education methods described above were selected verycarefully: they were designed specifically for use with groups of youngchildren with the general aim of engaging all children in music and notjust the most talented. The method most drawn on for the musicprogramme was Earwiggo, which was created by people with a wealth ofexperience with children with learning difficulties. The programme wasalso significantly influenced pedagogically and methodologically by bothGrowing with Music and Education Through Music, which were alsodesigned by people with many years of teaching experience. In addition,both of the latter methods are based on the Kodaly approach to musiceducation, which was developed very thoroughly over many decades

42



throughout the national education system in Hungary. Furthermore, theKodaly approach itself was the result of research into the best musiceducation methods in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The musical activities programme is thus based on very strongfoundations, while also benefiting enormously from the practical processof working with dyslexic children, which has led to a number ofadaptations and developments. It is hoped that this programme willcontinue to be used, developed and evaluated, with the help ofmusicians, classroom teachers and educational psychologists.

References

Blythe, S. (1998) Music Matters. Music Teacher September: 43.Chan, A.S., Ho, Y-C. and Cheung, M-C. (1998) Music training improves verbal

memory. Nature 396(12 November): 128.Goswami, U., Thomson, J., Richardson, U., Stainthorp, R. et al. (2002) Amplitude

envelope onsets and developmental dyslexia: a new hypothesis. Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 99(16):10911–10916.

Habib, M., Rey, V., Daffaure, V., Camps, R. et al. (2002) Phonological training inchildren with dyslexia using temporally modified speech: a three-step pilotinvestigation. International Journal of Communication Disorders 37(3): 289–308.

Hurwitz, I., Wolff, P., Bortnick, B. and Kokas, K. (1975) Non-musical effects of theKodaly music curriculum in primary grade children. Journal of LearningDisabilities 8(3): 45–52.

Johansen, K.V. (2000) Hearing, Central Auditory Processing Disorders andReading Problems. Paper presented at the International Dyslexia Association51st Annual Conference, Washington, DC, 8–11 November.

Kolb, G.R. (1996) Read with a beat: developing literacy through music and song.The Reading Teacher 50(1): 76–77.

MacLean, M., Bryant, P.E. and Bradley, L. (1987) Rhymes, nursery rhymes andreading in early childhood. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly 33(3): 255–281.

Nicolson, R.I., Fawcett, A.J. and Dean, P. (1995) Time estimation deficits indevelopmental dyslexia: evidence for cerebellar involvement. Proceedings of theRoyal Society: Biological Society 259(1354): 43–47.

O’Connor, R.E., Notarie-Syverson, A. and Vadasy, P.F. (1998) Ladders to Literacy: AKindergarten Activity Book. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., Baltimore.

Oglethorpe, S. (1996) Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook. Whurr,London.

Overy K. (2003) Dyslexia and music from timing deficits to musical intervention.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 999: 497–505.

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Overy, K. (2002) Dyslexia and Music: From Timing Deficits to Music Intervention.PhD Thesis. University of Sheffield, UK.

Overy, K. (1997) Music, Mental Skills and Education. MA Dissertation, University ofSheffield, UK.

Overy, K., Nicolson, R.I., Fawcett, A.J. and Clarke, E.F. (2003) Dyslexia and music:measuring musical timing skills. Dyslexia 9(1): 18–36.

Richards, M.H. (1977) Aesthetic Foundations for Thinking. Richards Institute ofMusic Education and Research, California.

Slevc, L.R. and Miyake, A. (2006) Individual differences in second-languageproficiency: does musical ability matter? Psychological Science 17(8): 675–681.

Stocks, M. and Maddocks, A. (1992) Growing with Music. Longman Group,Harlow, Essex.

Sutton, J. (1995) The sound-world of speech- and language-impaired children: thestory of a current music therapy research project. In A. Gilroy (ed), Art andMusic, Therapy and Research, Routledge, London.

Tallal, P. and Gaab, N. (2006) Dynamic auditory processing, musical experienceand language development. Trends in Neurosciences 29(7): 382–90.

Tallal, P., Miller, S. and Fitch, R.H. (1993) Neurobiological basis of speech: a casefor the pre-eminence of temporal processing. Annals of the New York Academy ofSciences 682(14 June): 27–47.

Trevarthen, C. (1999) Musicality and the intrinsic motive pulse: evidence fromhuman psychobiology and infant communication. Musicae Scientiae (SpecialIssue 1999/2000, Rhythms, musical narrative, and the origins of humancommunication): 157–213.

West, L. and Holdstock, J. (1985) Earwiggo Again – Rhythm Games. Yorkshire andHumberside Association for Music in Special Education.

West, L. and Holdstock, J. (1984) Earwiggo – Listening Games. Yorkshire andHumberside Association for Music in Special Education.

Wolf, M. and Bowers, P. (2000) The question of naming-speed deficits indevelopmental reading disability: an introduction to the Double-DeficitHypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities 33: 322–324.

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five

Early years: Deirdrestarts to learn piano

Olivia McCarthy and Diana Ditchfield

Deirdre was assessed as being dyslexic when she was 7.6 years andreceived targeted academic extra-curricular teaching for her particularpattern of dyslexia until she was about 14 years old. After this, she washeartily sick of all this extra work and of being ‘different’ and put her footdown and refused any more of it. Nevertheless, by this time she washappily settled in secondary school, where she was doing very well. Shehas since taken her Leaving Certificate and has started studying atuniversity to do an arts degree.

Nevertheless, at the age of 5 and during her first year at primary schoolDeirdre’s problems were serious. Although she attended an excellentschool close to her home and was raised in comfortable, happy andsupportive circumstances, she was so disruptive that the school was veryreluctant to allow her to remain and proceed to the second year.Eventually, because her older brother, who attended the same school, wasa clever child and the family were good supporters of the school, Deirdrewas kept on. Her mother later explained to Diana that even though shehad sat beside the same girl at the shared desk for the whole of the schoolyear she was unable to remember the girl’s name at the end of the year.

It was during this year that Olivia taught Deirdre piano at the local schoolof music where she and Diana both teach piano. Diana’s experiences, whichhave been recorded in Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors (Ditchfield,2001), followed Olivia’s when the timetable assigned Deirdre to Dianarather than Olivia. The observations and teaching/learning experienceswith Deirdre in this chapter took place during her first year of learningpiano. It is hoped they will inform and assist those who encounter unusualand unexpected challenges in teaching piano to very young children.It also supports the value of structured, cumulative, individually targeted



Music and Dyslexia

multisensory teaching, both for the dyslexic and non-dyslexic alike. Whatis good for the dyslexic is likely also to be good for the non-dyslexic. Whilebeing conversant with the methodology associated with Dalcroze andKodaly and others, we draw on all of the teaching and learning resourcesthat may be utilised in an interactional interpersonal situation as they seemappropriate, without slavishly following any particular named method.

When Deirdre was presented for enrolment into the music schoolwhere Diana and Olivia teach, her older brother was also enrolled as anew piano student with a different teacher at the same time, and therewas a younger sister at home. There would be sibling comparisons andall involved knew that, by virtue of the age difference, the older childwho had already acquired some literacy would progress more quickly. Aone-to-one situation permits a personal and immediate response. Thereare guideline curricular norms in the school which tend to define successor failure, although, at the age of 5, progress is often uneven and erratic,with varying difficulties and/or abilities expected for all children.

Deirdre always seemed surprised when she opened her music case andfound all of her music books and the class diary there; they were neverreturned to her music case in the tidy fashion in which they had beenextracted! The lesson time, straight after school, suggested Deirdre wouldbe tired and the requirement to concentrate at this time would bedemanding of any child. However, it was not long before it was observedthat levels of concentration, retention and attention were different andbelow average compared with other children of the same age whomDiana taught. Deirdre appeared to concentrate intensely for short periodsof time, and this seemed to exclude her use of other cues/senses; shefocused on the notes until ‘shut down’; she looked intently at the page,which puzzled her so much that it seemed she was unable to get anyclues from her other senses as to what it was all about. Freedom ofphysical response seemed hindered by visual concerns and worries, andby the end of the first term Deirdre was not able to confidently play anynotated piece of music she had been studying; she was not at ease withany page in the book.

Good teaching requires avoiding the point of ‘shut down’, but this wasvery difficult, as Deirdre seemed to be overwhelmed by information veryquickly. Beginning and ending each lesson optimistically andsuccessfully, therefore, was also not easy. There was no safe territory orfavourite piece or activity. It transpired from a later assessment forspecific learning difficulty (dyslexia) that a deficient short-term memorywas one of Deirdre’s chief problems.

Deirdre’s seating and hand positions were not a problem, which was avery positive achievement on Deirdre’s part. There also appeared to be a

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Early years: Deirdre starts to learn piano

good understanding of the relationship between physical action anddynamic level, and Deirdre was able to produce the sound she sought.This suggested also that there was aural awareness; she seemed surprisedby sudden changes of dynamics. The later dyslexia assessment noted noproblems with gross- or fine-motor co-ordination, or with sounddiscrimination or sound blending. However, in primary school, Deirdrehad great difficulty with phonics and phonological processing. It is nowbelieved that musical and phonological sounds are heard and processeddifferently by the ears and in the brain.

A very noticeable difference with Deirdre in comparison with otherchildren at the same age and stage was her sense of rhythm. She did notseem familiar with well-known nursery rhymes and did not seem tohave the usual pleasure from clapping and marching games. Deirdreappeared to have very varying responses to these, which made itdifficult to build complexity. It has now been established that there is astrong relationship between rhythm and reading and that, althoughweak rhythm at this age is not a safe determinant of dyslexia,nevertheless, it is a possible indicator. This raises the interesting questionas to whether rhythmic exercises during music lessons could conceivablybe useful remedial exercises in assisting dyslexics with literacy (seeChapter 4).

The acquisition of musical notational literacy was below average andrevision in note reading was almost a new exercise each time it wascarried out; we all forget things. However, Deirdre appeared unable tograsp the concept of the aural/visual relationship between the clefs andwas unable to bring into play the use of aural/tactile senses to fill in thegaps, as would often be the case with a child of similar age. In addition,Deirdre’s confusion with the printed page seemed to be preventing herfrom developing other musical skills, and also her fear of failure wastaking up too much concentration and prevented her from focusing onher successes. Generally, a child of this age is more likely to misread thanmishear, but a combination of reading and hearing often allows a child toself-correct. At this stage, Deirdre was unable to combine these twosenses in learning to play the piano, and it was a challenge to the teacherto prevent discouragement. Frequent changes of activity helped, but toomany of these can simply add confusion.

When reading pitch, Deirdre appeared to have no alternative strategyin place. For example, familiarity with other features on the page would,for other children, prompt their musical memory and performance, butDeirdre’s attention immediately focused intently on the actual notation.This difficulty with gaining an overview and relating all features on thepage together therefore delayed the acquisition of musical terminology

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Music and Dyslexia

where instructions regarding tempo or dynamics, for example, weretransferred from pictures to words.

Musical progress should not be limited by reading ability. Melodicmemory, rhythmic memory, muscular memory and aural memory maybe developed by rote learning, especially if supported in a pairedsituation, with the teacher singing, playing or clapping/tapping. Greatersecurity and confidence, as well as a sense of success and enjoyment, aregained in this way, and this teaching strategy was employed to goodeffect. As dyslexics are very familiar with failing, it is essential thatself-confidence is fostered at all possible opportunities.

In this first year, Deirdre did not interact with her music book. Forexample, at this stage, she did not personalise her music books withcolourings and drawings, although she was happy to draw in hermanuscript book or notebook or on the window. Very basic forms ofgraphic notation were introduced and there was a frequent switching offocus from the task in hand to an external action, such as a toy figurewalking across the lid of the piano. Unlike most children, Deirdre had nointerest in repeating any action, for example in playing a piece twice.Although the pattern of the lesson tends to have a familiar order, therewas no sense of anticipation. A sense of time elapsed or sequentialactivities are often acquired much later by the dyslexic compared withthe non-dyslexic. Deirdre did not appear to gain any sense of assuranceor comfort from routine. It was a challenge to the teacher to retainDeirdre’s attention and enjoyment during her half-hour lesson, mindfulat all times that it was a piano lesson and she wished to foster anddevelop a sense of musical enjoyment and ability in Deirdre. Teaching inthe music lesson was not confined to sitting at the piano. Where Deirdreenjoyed walking round the room ‘plinking’ the piano, it was used foraural development – as was listening to music. However, the latteractivity always had to involve Deirdre in doing something, as she wasquite unable to sit quietly and listen for any length of time.

While flexibility is important, it is also important to have some targetsfor the term and the year which are (a) achievable, (b) hopeful and likelyand also (c) improbable but not impossible (as it is important for thechild, parent and teacher to have a tangible result in a defined period oftime). Thus, thought was re-focused on the primary and secondary aimsof the lessons. These were defined as (a) learning to play the piano,(b) reading music, (c) developing musical sensibility and musicianship,(d) responding to music and (e) training in eye–hand co-ordination.

Every teacher has a personalised style. Suffice it to say, Deirdre enjoyedher lessons sufficiently to be keen to continue the following year, evenafter a long summer holiday. Indeed, she continued learning piano up

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until she entered secondary school, when the pressure of work and theadditional time spent with academic extra-curricular tuition demandedsome rationalisation. Deirdre’s parents endeavoured to allow her to beexposed to all manner of stimuli and she attended dance, elocution andgymnastics classes after school on a regular basis. She became sociallywell adjusted with many friends amongst her peers. She enjoyed singingat secondary school and took part in school musical productions,although she did not continue to learn piano or take up any other musicalinstrument.

It is difficult to quantify the value of early learning of a musicalinstrument for either a dyslexic or non-dyslexic child. Research inCanada (Trainor and Fujioka, 2006) suggests that early musical traininghas a beneficial effect on IQ and memory. It is, however, a greatencouragement in this longitudinal study to note that Deirdre hasdeveloped normally, and with a sense of personal well-being. Indicatorsof differences and imbalances were clearly visible in early piano lessons,and these differences had already been noted by Deirdre’s mother, evenbefore she attended primary school or piano lessons. Augur (1990) asksthe question, ‘Is three too young to know?’ and suggests that earlyindicators of dyslexia are noticed by some who are close to youngdyslexics and familiar with some of problems associated with thesyndrome. In Deirdre’s case, these were later confirmed as beingvisual-perceptual (sequential and spatial), short-term-memory,organisational, phonological, concentration and attention problems, andwith an added degree of hyperactivity. Her strengths were auditory andmotor, with added degrees of intelligence and family support. However,in a climate in which ‘dyslexia’ was not a household word, her motherdid not initially know what caused them. She, alongside other diligentand caring teachers, employed all her skills with openness and kindnessin helping Deirdre, and it is a credit to all, including the very hard workand persistence of Deirdre herself, that she has achieved so much at thisstage of her life.

The value of learning to play the pianoas a diagnostic and remedial tool

Although it would be invidious to regard music and learning to play thepiano as simply a tool to address various difficulties associated withdyslexia, nevertheless there may be collateral benefits which can help in

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Music and Dyslexia

the assessment and/or remediation of dyslexia. While being mindful ofindividual differences in general, an experienced piano teacher cansometimes notice difficulties associated with dyslexia. Music is acomprehensive discipline involving all the domains of intelligence, andstrengths and weaknesses may be evident. These weaknesses may beidentified as numerical, sequential (auditory and visual) ororganisational or to do with aspects of motor, concentration or retentionskills, or understood in terms of sensibility or other personal attitudessuch as application, perseverance, motivation – or any combination ofany of these.

A musical instrument is generally taught on a one-to-one basis. Thisallows for individual assessment and supported, structured andcumulative progress in a dynamic and creative manner. Teaching may beboth adjusted to the learner’s existing learning styles and may also beused to approach unfamiliar or unwelcome learning which may be eitheressential or beneficial for the purpose in hand. Some examples aresuggested below.

A child may have difficulty with the mathematical aspects of time andrhythm. Many approaches to this problem are suggested by Oglethorpe(1996). Music may be reduced to two beats in a bar if this suits a childbetter than understanding four beats. Tapping by hand, watching,listening, touching and sensing a vibrating regular beat through thehands and maybe tapping the foot alongside can help withunderstanding and reproducing rhythm and time, as can playing withthe teacher. Dyslexic children sometimes have difficulty with walking ormarching in time with music which has a regular beat. There is anelement of multisensory training which can be used both to acquire thespecific skill sought and transfer the learning from it, or from acquiring it,into other areas of learning. Moreover, it is worth remembering that theacquisition of the actual skill may precede the understanding of thecontent or process of what has been learnt. The resources of music areenormous and may be utilised dynamically by an experienced andsensitive piano teacher.

The size and strength of the hand, fingers and the body develop as thechild grows. These aspects should be accommodated, employed anddeveloped in the service of learning the piano, without over-extension.The physical requirement to assimilate the space, for example betweenthe notes on the keyboard of E and F sharp, eventually becomesphysically automatic; this physical ability may then be transferred to atheoretical understanding of key, for example, and this skill may beutilised in a different setting – or the process could occur in reverse forsome children.

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Concentration may be improved not just by individually supportedlearning but also especially by sharing enjoyment of music with the childso that motivation is also fostered and encouraged.

The absence of words and phonics is often a great relief to the dyslexicchild, although it is inevitable that words will increasingly become part ofthe picture at some point, hopefully when there is sufficient confidencefor them to be accepted without too much difficulty. Constant revisionand rehearsal are required in learning a musical instrument, and, apartfrom physical aspects, this notional skill is also transferable into otherareas of learning. ‘Practice makes Perfect’ is more than simply learning toplay the piano!

When written theory is being learnt, a child’s motor skills are employeddifferently as they need to write with a pencil; some children find it verydifficult to put a semibreve on bottom line treble clef E without itappearing to be bottom space treble clef F. There are specific orders andpatterns which are constantly repeated in music and, once these arerehearsed ritually, this familiarity and confidence in patterns and order isreassuring for a dyslexic child. Notational aspects of the horizontal andvertical have to be employed and this may present difficulties. Theteacher will need to be creative in helping these spatial aspects to be takenon board. Patience is also required as the actual point of understandingfor the child occurs when the child is ready and able to understand. Allthese aspects are transferable into other areas of learning and theadvantage is that learning the piano uses multisensory means at all times.

Music progresses, both on the page and in the heard sounds.Sometimes the concept of time elapsed is a problem for the dyslexic childand the learning of eight progressive bars of music helps remediate thedifficulty. If the child is able to vocalise by singing the tune, or evenputting letters or fingering to the tune (maybe a scale), this can reinforcelearning in a cumulative multisensory manner.

Visualisation is to be encouraged. Some children can play scales orother music simply by the visualisation of the music on the keyboard in ageographical manner, which is supported by the sound of the music andthe discrimination of whether the sound is ‘correct’.

Great support is sometimes required to move from the familiar to theunfamiliar. The teacher can sensitively reassure and foster thisrequirement and also, thereby, help set a pattern for the future where newthings are welcome or even sought and are no longer frightening or‘impossible’. We all enjoy employing either innate or learnt skills andthese may become tools we can manipulate for our own use and pleasure.In terms of playing the piano, this is sometimes referred to as ‘technique’.

Apart from the techniques learnt, there are aspects of sensibility.

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Music and Dyslexia

Margaret Donaldson (1987) refers to the close relationship between thegrowth of consciousness and the growth of the intellect, and it isreasonable to argue that learning to play the piano may also feed into thisprocess.

Organisational difficulties are sometimes associated with dyslexia, andthe requirement to be highly organised when learning and playing thepiano can be supported and become a useful skill. It may be that theparents/guardians of the child are glad of some assistance with helpingtheir charges.

It is difficult to quantify the benefits of learning to play a musicalinstrument in addressing the diagnosis and remediation of the difficultiesof dyslexia, not least because the growing child is absorbing andprocessing many different types of information. Music should above allbe a pleasurable experience and the aspects discussed above shouldalways remain subsidiary.

References

Augur J (1990) Is three too young to know? Dyslexia Contact 9(1): 10–11.Ditchfield, D. (2001) Teaching the piano to Deidre. In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening

New Doors, T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.Donaldson, M. (1987) Children’s Minds, Fontana Press, London.Oglethorpe, S. (1996) Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook, Whurr,

London.Trainor, L. and Fujioka, T. (2006) First evidence that musical training affects brain

development in young children, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060920093024.htm, accessed 1 August 2007.

Cameo Two

Some thoughts about early yearsPauline Poole, John Westcombe and Diana Ditchfield

Pauline Poole introduces this cameo

I believe in music in early years as creative fun, an indicator of speciallearning difficulties (SpLDs) and remedial support for pre-literaryexperiences. In some cases, music is a great vehicle for learning inearly years and also the ‘big spike’ to balance the lows caused by

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SpLD problems. As a teenager, however, it is also an outlet for thedyslexic’s frustrations!

My son Mark’s difficulties with notation led him to change fromviolin to drums. We had decided that the theory side would provefrustrating in GCSE, and chose to do electronics instead. His musicteacher petitioned us from April to July, claiming that Mark was agifted musician he (the staff member) was anxious to have in theexamination class. The change was made and he is thoroughlyenjoying the course, although I remain concerned about theexamination requirements. His drum lessons are going well and heplays the drums at church.

Now John Westcombe and Diana Ditchfield join with Pauline toexpand on this theme below.

Blues in the early years

Many children have very early experiences in music and respond indifferent ways. Some have greater difficulty than their peers inremembering nursery rhymes, learning tunes and articulating lyricsor get them jumbled up – difficulties that may indicate an SpLD andcan be early-warning signs for an alert practitioner. On the otherhand, some have outstanding early gifts in hearing and repeating atune, moving and keeping the beat. These should be logged as theymay form part of the ‘spiky profile’ of a dyslexic individual, asmentioned above.

For all children, music can be enjoyable and satisfy creative needs.It can also provide invaluable support – for remediating weakness inhearing rhyme and rhythm, speech development and learningsequences – which can ameliorate early literacy learning.

Some early developmental situations will be glimpsed and‘partnered’ with some ‘differences seen’, usually by a mother. Thesedifferences are often identified as being ‘different from peers’, even ifit is her first child. Carefully exposing the infant to multiple stimulican assist overall healthy development. Alongside this, the view thatscreening should be done earlier than hitherto is gaining muchsupport. In any event, by the end of Key Stage 2, many differenceswill have fallen into place within the overall development andemerging personality of the young person. However, some willremain, and it is essential to identify and allow attention to these soas to give maximum encouragement.

Is there a difference between helping the dyslexics with their music

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Music and Dyslexia

and using music to help their dyslexia? In so far as they requiredifferent expertise, the answer has to be ‘yes’.

Many children show a physical response to music, for example indance and movement. Some can pitch and sing in tune and follow abeat; some march to strong Common Time music; some can dance apolka, hornpipe, jig and so on. Although it is not always the case,generally the dyslexic has more difficulty with these aspects than hisor her counterpart. Further, the dyslexic will be perplexed whenpresented with musical notation. It can be a fraught situation andrequires patience and as much expertise as can be mustered in termsof keeping the child on board and making positive progress. Therethen follows the problem of co-ordinating the reading of musicalnotation and getting it along the main pathways through the brain tothe hands, voice or feet, and reproducing it as music on the flute or indancing or singing. These can be trying, if illuminating, times for thenon-dyslexic and often magnified for the dyslexic child.

Singing is a great help in assisting in the breaking down of wordsinto their syllables, thus aiding the critical phonological element.

The dyslexic child will be helped by practice in rhythm, nurseryrhymes, games etc., particularly any material which has a call andanswer structure. (See Chapter 4.) Working in these activities is notbeyond the good teaching instincts and reactions of the class teacher.Many teachers are far too modest in these matters – they don’t haveto be trained musicians to have a teacherly view of how a piece beingcomposed by a group might take alternative paths.

So, the dyslexic young person can be helped to read by musicalactivities; their musical counterpart will probably need help toimprove their music once the staves and symbols make theirappearance.

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six

Winning over thereluctants

Christine McRitchie Pratt, Diana Ditchfield, SheilaOglethorpe and John Westcombe

Individual music making should be rewarding and enjoyable. Particularcare needs to be taken to ensure that a person with traits of dyslexia iswell supervised.

Any lack of enthusiasm for music might arise for several reasons.Sensitive discussions need to take place about styles of teaching, just asmuch as of learning. Is there ever discussion about whether the approachthe teacher takes is that to which the pupil responds best? Pupils andparents need to be aware of all possible factors which might prevent aneasy progression, as most young people like to feel that they are gettingon, but some don’t like to be too pressured or tied to Grade examinations.Pupils must feel comfortable with the instrument they are learning, thetiming of lessons and surroundings. Schools can sometimes beinhospitable places at the beginning and end of the day. At home, sittingon the most comfortable chair in the room where practice is done maywell induce bad posture, and a properly firm music stand is critical.

Lately, there has been an encouraging commitment from theGovernment to extend access to instruments through LEAs and schools.This is welcome, long overdue and should bring many moreopportunities for pupils to experience all kinds of instruments. Further,by this and other methods, pupils can see that by no means all music isnotation-bound. The great bodies of jazz, improvisation and music fromother continents are not. And so, just because music is not recorded onthe page does not mean that it cannot be played or sung.

Dyslexics often prefer to learn a piece from memory, to discern what itsounds like before seeing what it looks like, and this can include theteacher playing it for them.



Music and Dyslexia

Exactly what helps pupils (including adults) to look forward to lessonsand the practice which attends them? We know a young lady whoanticipates the enjoyment of lessons partly because she enjoys meetingthe teacher’s dog and cat. More seriously, there needs to be a sense ofprogress, creating and performing with others, of being able to show theresults of work between lessons, as well as the discovery of newrepertoire.

There may be reluctants who ought to be in the groups that the schoolorganises. Sometimes it is almost an external thing – like going to anattractive concert or meeting a charismatic, professional, visitingmusician who sets the individual towards involvement. This sometimeshappens when teachers and parents have offered all sorts of otherblandishments, apparently without response – disturbing! Availabilityand choice of instruments are critical, and we have to understand that theinstrument which a young person may choose may not be the one allearlier signs have pointed to, or the one parents would have most liked.

Should we worry if the young person decides that an electronickeyboard is a more congenial starter instrument than the piano?

If it happens that the learner is dyslexic, and has known that they arefor some time, it is particularly important to understand the major causeof reluctance. It may simply be not liking the current pieces, finding aparticular passage troublesome or getting round the ‘it looks likesight-reading every time I look at it’ situation. Here, a brick-by-brick,multisensory, structured programme initiated by the teacher (which usesminimal practice notes and writing and focuses more on the practical,non-reading aspects of music learning), buttressed by the thoughtfulsupport of parents or carers, is so important. Is it just the mechanics ofreading off the page that’s the trouble – have eyes been tested recently?Have coloured transparencies been tried? Has the pupil recentlytransferred to the secondary sector? And are there just too many activitiesto try to be in?

Participating in music holds possibilities of infinite pleasure, andparents, carers and teachers need to listen carefully to a young person forwhom this appears not to be true.

The basis of this short chapter appeared originally in the British Dyslexia Association’sjournal Contact 24(2), in May of 2005. The editors are grateful for permission to use it.

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seven

Can music lessonshelp the dyslexic

learner?Sheila Oglethorpe

Introduction

The question ‘Can music lessons help the dyslexic learner?’ is oftenasked. It is possible to answer it in several different ways, according towhat the questioner really means. They may mean: ‘If a dyslexic islearning to read music, does it make them better at reading words or evenat doing mental arithmetic?’ I suspect that sometimes the questioner israther vague about what they mean, but perhaps they are hoping thatmusic, in some way, can be the answer to a multiplicity of difficulties thata dyslexic may have, ranging from a poor short-term memory andperhaps organisational and sequencing problems to bizarre spelling andan apparent reading block that won’t go away.

‘Music’ today is a term with very fuzzy edges, and it is perhaps unwiseto restrict it to the sort of traditional classical sounds that, for the lasteight centuries or more, until, perhaps, the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury, have been handed down to us in the Western world. However, inview of the fact that ‘music’ is almost indefinable today, we shall beconcentrating in this chapter on what is normally understood to be whata child might expect when he or she begins on a course of instrumentalmusic lessons.

Defining ‘dyslexia’ is almost as hard – and liable to omission – asdefining ‘music’, and it is likely to remain so until somebody discovers itsroot cause. Meanwhile, there must be as many variations of what we calldyslexia (or specific learning difficulties) as there are species of roses, but



Music and Dyslexia

the general pattern of characteristics underlying dyslexia is asrecognisable as roses are. It is customary to regard dyslexia as a bundle ofproblems that have to be circumvented, and it is often hard for a dyslexic,living in a world that is essentially non-dyslexic, to see it as anything else.Sometimes, however, it is worth asking how much the criteria laid downby non-dyslexics are worth. I believe that there is room in the world ofmusic, perhaps particularly in the teaching of music, for a good deal ofcompromise.

I think that the majority of people who wonder whether music can helpdyslexics are really wondering whether music can help the dyslexic tobehave more in a non-dyslexic way. This attitude presupposes thatnon-dyslexics are somehow more valuable than dyslexics and completelyignores the wonderfully imaginative, creative and lively qualities thatdyslexics often bring, particularly to the arts. There is a recurring themein all the anecdotes quoted below: the children wanted to learn a musicalinstrument. They must have felt drawn to music. Researchers with adultshave suggested that the appreciation of music is predominantly anattribute of the right hemisphere of the brain, being the hemisphere thatprocesses pitch, melodic contour, tonal memory and timbre (Gordon,1978; Borchgrevink, 1982; Overy, 2000; Schneider et al., 2005). Overy et al.(2004) have also investigated whether or not children (of an average ageof 6 years 4 months) show the same hemispheric specialisation. Theysuggest that this develops with age. The left hemisphere is mainly,though not exclusively, concerned with rhythm and the naming oridentification of tunes. This is the logical side of the brain, the side that isneeded for reading skills and spelling. It would be natural for thedyslexic child to be inclined to right-brain activities, which wouldprobably include music, art, acting and sport. These children are likely tobe drawn towards a skill that is more compatible with their inclinationsthan logical left-brain skills, such as reading and writing. Many dyslexicswish that they were not dyslexic because of the difficulties they have withleft-brain skills, but there are also many who have learnt to be happywith the way they are. As one of these said to me: ‘I’m used to the way Iam now and I wouldn’t have me any different.’

Unfortunately, there are dyslexics who have had a miserable timecooped up with intimidating and unhelpful instrumental music teacherswho have had a thoroughly negative and sometimes actually detrimentaleffect on their pupil’s self-esteem. This, as we all know, is crucial forsuccess in any field. Unless one is a fly on the wall, one cannot tell exactlywhy some children fail to gain anything very much from their musiclessons while others gain a lot. Maybe it is because those who fail are thechildren one does not often get told about! But it can also be a matter of

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Can music lessons help the dyslexic learner?

personal chemistry between the teacher and the pupil. I believe that achild can sense almost immediately whether the teacher is truly sensitiveand the right person for them. A pupil will respond positively, perhapsnot at first, if they are dyslexic, because their negative experiences mayhave taught them to be cautious and to try to hide what their real feelingsand difficulties are, but eventually, when it is obvious to them that theteacher is a friend who can be trusted.

It does happen that, sometimes, parents do not realise that a dyslexic islikely to have just as many problems, and possibly more, with learning toread and play music as they have with literacy in the classroom. Thechild has to be quite sure that they want to learn if they are going tosucceed, and it is no good if the parents are just searching around forsomething else that their child can do that may not turn out to be thefailure which everything else has been. I have heard of several parentswho have thought that the main reason for subjecting their dyslexic childto one-to-one lessons with a music teacher was to teach them toconcentrate. It is important that the musical experience has to be socompelling that the child wants to pursue it in spite of any difficulty theymay have in achieving their aims.

However, there are many dyslexics for whom their music lessons havebeen the one beacon of hope in an otherwise dark and depressinglearning experience. I once had a letter from the mother of a dyslexicflautist, who said that her daughter’s flute playing was her only source ofself-esteem. Since then, I have heard the same thing over and over again.I am sure that this is a scenario that many a parent of a dyslexic childwould recognise.

For several years now, studies have been carried out on how musicmay be harnessed to help all children in many different ways. On thewhole, however, there has been a relatively small amount of empiricalresearch done in the field of music and dyslexia, particularly as to howthe learning of music can assist the dyslexic in their general education.Kate Overy at Edinburgh University is one of the few who are nowworking in this field (Chapter 4). What we have learnt of the value ofmusic for dyslexics has been chiefly anecdotal. Evidence of this comespouring in, often uninvited but always welcome. The following storiesare all illustrative of how music has changed the lives of the dyslexicpupils who were lucky enough to have the support and encouragementof teachers and parents. Sometimes a parent will decide that theirdyslexic offspring has too much on their plate already to take on musiclessons as well. These parents do not want to risk more failure. I suggestthat if there were any evidence that the child is musical it would be a riskworth taking, as can be seen from the following stories.

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Music and Dyslexia

Personal histories: increased self-esteemand confidence

Tim

Tim’s story illustrates how any child can be set on fire by a particular sortof sound to the extent that, whatever their difficulties, they will pursue ituntil they have mastered the skill to create that sound for themselves.Having discovered that something which initially seemed so difficult wasactually accessible if he tried hard enough, Tim seems to have beenreassured that other skills would come his way if he persevered.

Tim began learning the cello aged 7. At that time his parents werewatching their bright, happy, communicative little boy failing to cope atschool, struggling with literacy, getting a lot of negative vibes becauseteachers said he was being lazy and also clearly far less able than hisolder brother and sister. His major dyslexic difficulties were, and still are,with poor visual memory and information-processing speed. At that timehis state primary school employed peripatetic music teachers. He heardother children playing the cello and decided that he too wanted to learnbecause he loved its deep resonant sound. His class teacher, the schoolmusic specialist, said that he would never cope with an instrument, butthe cello teacher said she would teach him if that was what he wanted,but not if the impetus came from the parents.

Tim started really slowly. He found rhythm difficult and his sequentialmemory made it hard for him to learn a tune. Quite how he stuck it out,when other more successful learners gave up, his mother said she wouldnever know, except that he is a determined character and he really lovedthe rich sound. His teacher started him reading music from quite early on,in spite of the fact that he had difficulty tracking a line of print in a book.His mother thought that the combination of reading the note and makinga physical action to play it before moving on to the next note really helpedwith tracking. His teacher was extremely supportive, even though shepreviously knew very little about dyslexia, and his music lessons came to bea real highlight in what was often a difficult and unrewarding week. Witha less sensitive teacher, things could have been very different. Although hewas not outstandingly good at the cello, he was starting to develop a skillin which he could take pride and which was not shared by most of his class.

Tim started to read stories more fluently between the ages of 8 and 9.His mother does not know how much of this was due to his music or how

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much it was due to a lot of literacy support at home, or whether it wouldhave happened anyway, but she thinks it would not have. Although he isnow hoping to read history at university, he has kept up his music, as itgives him a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure. He is going to takeGrade 7 before he leaves school. His mother thinks that his cello lessonswere useful both for the discipline of sequential activity (music readingand scale learning) and for building his self-esteem. She says: ‘Music wasthe first thing that ever went right at school.’

Andrew

Andrew’s story illustrates the individuality of the dyslexic learner. It alsosheds another light on the importance of finding the right teacher who isprepared to take risks and allow a child to learn the way they can and notthe way that is usually taught.

Andrew began to learn the cello when he was 5 years old, beforeanyone realised that he was dyslexic. His teacher was a very enthusiasticlady and liked his mother to be present during his lessons so that he hadextra support when he was practising at home. Both his teacher and hismother encouraged and praised him together. He started learning thepiano a year later and seemed to absorb reading music without anydifficulty, but his teacher did not insist on his knowing the names of thenotes at that stage.

Everything changed when the family moved abroad because of hisfather’s job. The teaching was now very formal and his new pianoteacher insisted on his knowing what the notes were called before he wasallowed to play them. He found this very difficult because when requiredto focus on lines and spaces he would be unable to decide exactly wherethe note was. He soon gave up the piano, though he did manage to keepthe cello going. These were not happy days, and his parents were worriedabout the way his love of music lessons was falling off.

Eventually, the family moved back to England and things began tolook up again. School was hard: Andrew was no good at games, he couldnot catch a ball and big numbers confused him. (When his mother askedhim what he meant by ‘big numbers’, he said: ‘Anything over three!’) Hewas not unintelligent; his mother explained the binary system to him andhe picked it up immediately and now uses it in his work all the time. Butmusic was something he could excel at. He joined a local youth orchestraand eventually achieved Grade 8 on the cello. Playing the cello had beena lifeline for him.

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Music and Dyslexia

Jenny

Jenny’s story is about a girl who was very sensitive to her ownshortcomings but, like Tim, was so captivated by the sound of the cellothat she was prepared to lay herself open to the possibility of more failurein the hope that one day she would succeed in being able to play it wellenough to be able to join in music-making with others. In admitting herfears and her ambitions, and with the help of caring and supportiveteachers who believed in her, she eventually tasted success, not only inmusic but in other fields too.

Jenny was very apprehensive about starting at a new school andconfessed to her cello teacher that she was afraid that she would not beable to read music. She said she found reading words difficult, butsomeone in her family had played the cello and she liked the sound of itenough to want to try it herself. She had had very little help with herdyslexic problems at her previous school and had been considered quitebackward, but actually she was an intelligent child who did not learn theway she was expected to learn. She learnt differently, as all dyslexics do.

Jenny’s first lesson began with a simple multisensory demonstration ofminims and crotchets followed by an explanation of the four open stringsand where the notes that corresponded to them could be found on thestave. She sailed through the lesson reading everything that was put infront of her and left the room having, for the first time in her life, madesense of written information quickly and easily.

Fortunately for Jenny, the school had a strong support systemfor dyslexics, and over the years her cello teacher and her support teacherworked closely together, noting everything that was going on. The supportteacher was positive that Jenny benefited enormously both from theone-to-one tuition on the cello and also from playing in groups for concertsbecause she had acquired a sense of her own worth. She also thoughtthat Jenny gained valuable auditory support through learning to play amusical instrument and had increased her powers of auditory perception.

Personal histories: being part of a team

Jonathan

Jonathan, another dyslexic from a musical family, learnt the trumpet andthe drums. He always had trouble reading music, but when he was at

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secondary school he was taken to see an optometrist who prescribed eyeexercises to help him to focus better. Eventually, he was able to join aband that had a very supportive leader and he enjoyed being part of ateam that actually achieved things. Music mattered more to him thananything else; it was something he could do. He actually achieved Grade 8on the trumpet. His mother said that ‘music kept him together’ and also,very tellingly, that ‘music speaks to the emotions when all else hasfailed’.

Ian

Ian was labelled a ‘slow learner’ at school in the days before dyslexia wasrecognised as a condition that needed appropriate remedial treatment.He realises now that he has always been dyslexic, partly because he alsohas a dyslexic son. He struggled academically, but music was a refugeand a confidence builder for him. His piano teacher was ‘great’. Sheseemed to have an understanding that he would ‘get it eventually’, andthe school band was also run well; so he took up the clarinet and lovedplaying with others even though the music was often way above hisplaying ability. He felt that he could contribute as part of a team and laterhe realised that this team spirit was very significant because he becameconscious that people need to be able to work as part of a teamthroughout life. He is convinced from his own experience that music canhelp dyslexics, and his conviction is such that he has now become amusic teacher himself, specialising in children with learning difficulties.

Personal histories: improvingconcentration

Tracey

Ian has analysed the effect which music has had on his own life. Tracey,who is still in her early teens, has also thought about how music hasinfluenced her life so far. She used to be a bit of a rebel at school, but shethinks that learning to play the piano has calmed her because her pianoteacher sets her short-term goals that she can achieve, and she enjoys thesuccess. She thinks that her concentration has improved because she has

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Music and Dyslexia

such a desire to learn new pieces and, at her request, her teachers in theclassroom are giving her more achievable short-term goals to keep herfocused in other subjects. This seems to be working. Her piano teacherhas also encouraged her to read about her pieces and their composersand Tracey says that this has helped her English.

James

I have written about James before (Oglethorpe, 2001). Following theextremely moving and fruitful experience that I had when I heard hisstory, both he and his mother kept in touch with me. He had become acathedral chorister two or three years later than the normal age, whichcan be as early as 7 years old, but it was an enormous struggle for him atfirst. He could not tell the time or sequence the days of the week and sodid not know which day of the week it was or what happened on thatday, and he was unable to follow the timetable. But music was what helived for, and the discipline of the chorister life was extremely beneficialfor him. When his voice broke, the benefits of his choristership continuedthrough his teens. He thinks that he had become so accustomed toreading music and the words of hymns, psalms and anthems that hetransferred the skill to reading books. The desire to read has stayed withhim and he is now at university. This is not to say that his dyslexia is, forwant of a better word, cured, far from it, but, as most usually happenswith dyslexics, and often at great cost, he has learnt to cope.

Mark

There is a parallel between James and Mark, also a cathedral chorister.Mark was awarded a choral scholarship to a very prestigious cathedral.He had already been diagnosed as dyslexic but had also had anintelligence test from an educational psychologist, who found that he hadan exceptionally high IQ and advised that he should be educated as far aspossible with other very intelligent children. It was suggested to theheadmaster of the choir school that Mark was so intelligent that he wouldeventually find his own way to get round his problems, and the fact thathe was dyslexic should not be allowed to stand in his way. Both thechoirmaster and the headmaster were prepared to take the risk.

Mark’s chief problem was that his auditory memory for speech wasvery short. He needed to watch the teacher speak. He also found that hewas unable to pitch sounds by interval, but, having once heard the

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sound, however difficult, he could pick it out of the air with no trouble;so he was invaluable in the choir whenever really modern music wasperformed. Concentration was a problem, very probably because of hisshort verbal memory; so he found it hard to maintain an argument, andhe did not do well academically in his early years. However, he did wellenough eventually to get a degree at Cambridge University, and he isnow head of his department at a large comprehensive school. It isdifficult to quantify the main benefit that his musical education had onhis academic prowess, but it seems that it was chiefly a hugeimprovement in his power of concentration.

Personal histories: auditory perception

Simon

I have already mentioned that Jenny’s auditory perception improvedwhen she started cello lessons. Simon had been receiving learningsupport for some time when he began learning the cello aged 7. He hadtwo older siblings, both of them dyslexic, and a very supportive family.In his early childhood he had suffered a series of ear infections just at thepoint when he should have been developing the ability to synthesisesounds, and his learning process had undoubtedly been affected. He wasparticularly adept at mathematics, but his dyslexia was serious enough tohandicap him in all other fields of learning.

His teacher used her own multisensory method to teach Simon aboutnote lengths, which he picked up immediately, and she found thatfingering was much less of a problem than for most of his peers becauseof his apparent affinity with numbers. As he had no alphabetical systemin his head, however, letter names of notes were totally meaningless. Histeacher felt that at least he ought to be familiar with the letter names ofthe open strings; so she decided to relate them to people that wereimportant to him, one of them being his father and one the cat! Letternames began to take on a character of their own. He began to read musiceasily, and when his teacher asked him why he found it so much easierthan reading words he said: ‘I think of it like numbers.’

Simon also became an unusually perceptive and reliable member of acello group. This made it possible for him to participate in something thathe enjoyed, and on an equal footing with his peers.

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It was only a short time, about two terms, before the dyslexia supportteacher noticed a huge change in Simon’s auditory perception thataffected his reading and spelling.

Conclusion

There may be no empirical evidence of music lessons helping dyslexics.Experience does show, however, that the musical dyslexic child who hasbeen allowed and encouraged to develop their talent is likely to find thatwhat they have learnt in the music room is reflected in the classroom.Music can assist with the learning of the basics of the literary process byincreasing awareness of sequential activity, by improving auditoryperception (which helps with reading and spelling), by emphasising theimportance of accurate tracking, and by providing encouragement toread. In addition there is some anecdotal evidence that the improvementwhich is engendered from the finger dexterity that is required for manyinstruments can improve the handwriting of some dyslexics. Also,because of the precise nature of written music and the extraordinarycomplexity of the mix of time, rhythm, pitch, dynamics and style, as oneparent said, ‘music hooks them in to concentrate’.

There are any number of stories about dyslexic children who havedeveloped a sense of their own worth, as Jenny did. By learning to play amusical instrument, a child can contribute to the creation of a musicalexperience with his or her peers. This, of course, is extremely valuable initself, not least because dyslexia is such an isolating condition. Thedyslexic person seems so often to be running an obstacle race whileeveryone else is running a flat race. There seems to be no doubt that, ifthe dyslexic child is musical and has the right teacher, one of the mainadvantages of instrumental music lessons is the boost to children’sself-esteem when they are able to create for themselves the joy of music.This has been another recurring theme in all the stories I have comeacross. Success can begin in the first lesson and can be built upon withnone of the stresses of competition that are inevitably experienced in theclassroom. Eventually, when playing alongside other children or takingpart in an instrumental ensemble, another dimension begins that givesenormous satisfaction: the awareness of being part of a team withsomething unique to contribute. The value of this is inestimable.Enabling a child to enjoy the satisfaction of partaking in a shared musicalexperience, where everyone has their own particular obstacles to

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overcome before the job can be completed and where everyone has to besensitive to what is being created all the time, gives them a taste of thatreal comradeship which is so often lacking in the rest of their uphillstruggle.

References

Borchgrevink, H.M. (1982) Prosody and musical rhythm are controlled by thespeech hemisphere. In M. Clynes (ed), Music, Mind and Brain: TheNeuropsychology of Music, Plenum Press, New York.

Gordon, H.W. (1978) Hemispheric asymmetry for dichotically-presented chordsin musicians and non-musicians, males and females. Acta Psychologica 42(5):383–395.

Oglethorpe, S. (2001) The dyslexic chorister. In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening NewDoors, T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.

Overy, K. (2000) Dyslexia, temporal processing and music: the potential of musicas an early learning aid for dyslexic children. Psychology of Music 28(2): 218–229.

Overy, K. Norton, A.C., Cronin, K.T. et al. (2004) Imaging melody and rhythmprocessing in young children. Neuro Report 15(11): 1723–1726.

Schneider, P., Sluming, V., Roberts, N., Bleeck, S. and Rupp, A. (2005) Structural,functional, and perceptual differences in Heschl’s Gyrus and musicalinstrument preference. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1060(1):387–394.

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eight

Parallels betweenthe teaching of

musical andmathematical

notationTim Miles

The aim of this chapter is to show some of the similarities between whatis needed in the teaching of musical notation and the teaching ofmathematical notation. It is, of course, possible to play and listen tomusic without a knowledge of its notation, whereas the learning ofmathematics cannot even start without a knowledge of the function ofthe symbols 1, 2, 3 etc. It is widely agreed, however, that those without aknowledge of musical notation are foregoing many of the pleasures ofmusic-making, including the possibility of playing or singing in a hugevariety of groups as well as individual work. They may also miss out onthe possibility of making a detailed study of a musical score and hence ofcoming to a better understanding of the composer’s intentions.

Musicians who are dyslexic are likely to need more time than thosewho are not dyslexic to master the intricacies of musical notation – just asthey need more time to master the notation which we call letters of thealphabet. I am quite sure, however, that for the very great majority ofdyslexics who are keen on music the effort involved in mastering musicalnotation is well worth while.

What, then, are the parallels between teaching musical notation andteaching mathematical notation?

There is in the first place an interesting difference between the twonotations. In the notation of basic mathematics the instructions as to what



Parallels between the teaching of musical and mathematical notation

is to be done are specified to the last detail; in contrast, in musical notationthere remains much that is left to the interpretation of the performer. Forexample, the composer may write the instruction rallentando, whichmeans ‘slow down’. Exactly how much to slow down, however, in orderto give the best effect, is something which has to be decided by theperformer. It is a matter of familiar experience that we may regard oneperson’s interpretation of a piece of music as superior to that of anotherperson’s. In contrast, if the notation in basic mathematics tells us to carryout a particular calculation the answer is either right or wrong. One proofof a theorem may, indeed, be more elegant than another, and to thatextent there is room for preference. There can be no preference, however,as to whether we say 2 + 2 = 4 or 2 + 2 = 5; the latter is wrong – full stop.

In the case of speech, one can usefully think of letters of the alphabet asthings which in combination tell us what mouth movements to use.Similarly, one can think of numerals as instructions as to what to say inorder to tell people how many objects are present or the length of adistant object in space or time. Similarly, one can think of musicalnotation as a set of instructions telling us what notes to play on a musicalinstrument or what notes to sing. In all these cases there is an associationbetween marks on paper and muscular movements.

There is a rather curious linguistic convention by which the expression‘the music’ sometimes refers not to music as such but to the musicalscore. Thus, if someone asks, ‘Have you brought the music?’ this isunderstood to mean the written version of the music, for instance thepiano or orchestral parts or the parts of a piece of chamber music. In viewof this linguistic convention, it is very important that the differencebetween music and musical notation should be recognised from the verystart by both dyslexic pupils and their teachers. This is primarily becausea dyslexic pupil may find the decoding of musical notation very hard butyet be an extremely sensitive musician.

Those who teach mathematics to dyslexics and those who teach themmusic have to deal with what are basically the same problems. It is lesseasy for a dyslexic than for a non-dyslexic to attach the right name to aparticular symbol. As was pointed out in Chapter 1, dyslexia essentiallyinvolves a problem with naming, or verbal labelling. This is true whetherthe thing to be named is a letter of the alphabet, an Arabic numeral, asquare-root sign or a chemical formula. It is also true in the case of a clefsign, the symbols signifying duration, such as crotchets and minims, atime signature, an instruction saying ‘da capo’ and, in general, the wholerange of signs which go to make up musical notation. In all cases learningthe name of the symbol is possible for dyslexics, but it may take themmore time and effort than it takes their non-dyslexic peers: the names

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Music and Dyslexia

may take longer to sink in and become associated with their meaning,and may also be more easily forgotten. Once, however, the names havebeen learnt, dyslexics are no worse than non-dyslexics at applying whatthey know.

With regard to the notation of mathematics, all children in oureducational system are required to learn the Arabic numerals 1, 2, 3 etc.and the signs for multiplication (×), division (÷), addition (+) andsubtraction (−). As they advance, they have to learn the use of furthersymbols, such as the equals sign (=), the sign for square root (

√) and, in

due course, other symbols such as �, cosine and many more.Those symbols that are in frequent use, when they have once been

acquired, stay in the memory. This is true of dyslexics and non-dyslexicsalike. It is particularly so if the number of symbols in a given list is small,for example the days of the week. A dyslexic child may be relatively latein learning to recite them but is unlikely to have any long-lastingdifficulty. In contrast, the months of the year require the learning andordering of 12 names, and these come round relatively infrequentlycompared with the days of the week. This means that for some dyslexicchildren the knowledge is not secure until their teens or even later. Thespelling of long words and the recitation of arithmetical tables bothimpose a heavy load on the memory system, which means that, withoutspecial effort or special compensatory strategies, a dyslexic child may gothrough life without, for instance, being able to recite some of the moreawkward times tables, such as the six, seven, eight and 12 times. (The 10and 11 times have obvious regularities, and the nine times is possible ifone remembers that its digits always add up to a multiple of nine (0 + 9,1 + 8, 2 + 7, 3 + 6 etc.).

It is sometimes possible, however, because dyslexic pupils and theirteachers are aware of such limitations, that in particular areas they mayinvest extra time and effort in acquiring a particular skill and end upbeing more proficient than some non-dyslexics. Thus, although mostdyslexic musicians are relatively weak at sight-reading, I know of adyslexic double bass player, Michael Lea (see Chapter 11), who finds thathis sight-reading is better than average. To say simply that a dyslexiccannot do this or that has always seemed to me unnecessarily defeatist.

How, then, can the learning of arithmetical or musical terms best betaught? It is widely agreed that, whatever the symbols in question –letters of the alphabet, numerals and the symbols used in musicalnotation – simply relying on the pupil’s memory is ineffective. Theteaching needs first and foremost to be multisensory.

‘Multisensory’ means ‘involving many senses’; in other words, inmultisensory teaching one does not teach through vision alone or

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through hearing alone. The pupil is encouraged to look carefully at thesymbol, to listen carefully to its sound, to pay attention to the mouthmovements needed for saying its name and to the hand movementsneeded for writing or typing it. If all these senses work in conjunction,memorisation becomes much easier.

Secondly, the teaching needs to take advantage of the dyslexic’sstrengths. Dyslexics tend to be good at reasoning and, once the names ofthe symbols have been acquired, at doing creative things with them andat recognising regularities and patterns.

Because any notation is likely to present dyslexics with difficulty, it isunderstandable if they find learning it unpleasant. An important startingpoint, therefore, is to make them aware that both mathematics and musicare things to be enjoyed. That is why it is not good practice to allow themto associate either mathematics or music with the, to them, laborious taskof learning notations. A teacher who says to the class (I hope none do!),‘We are going to do music this morning. Learn this: E-G-B-D-F’ may givethe impression to dyslexic children that music is not for them.

In the case of mathematics there are all kinds of ways of creatingenjoyment. For the very young child it may be enjoyable just to play withblocks and build things with them. If the blocks are differently coloured,there is the opportunity to build all sorts of patterns – and it should beremembered that many dyslexics are artistically gifted, and so, in theexample of the coloured blocks, one is encouraging them to use theirstrengths.

By the same token, music is something to be enjoyed. For some youngchildren, it can be fun simply to beat on a drum or make a noise withcastanets. At a later age many dyslexic children, like other children, mayderive pleasure from listening to music and from playing tunes by ear(that is without any notation) on a piano, recorder or other instrument.

Notation, whether mathematical, musical or any other, needs to beintroduced to dyslexic children only very gradually, with plenty of timebeing allowed for them to take it in; otherwise they will not remember it.It is unhelpful to come up with remarks such as, ‘I showed you thatyesterday – why didn’t you listen?’

When the notation to be learnt is mathematical, the teacher may like toset out blocks in groups of, say, three, four or five, and ask the pupil tocount them. As was indicated above, learning the names of the Arabicnumerals from 1 to 10 and writing them down is a manageable task forthe young dyslexic, provided they are not rushed. Similarly, there is littledifficulty in associating the names of the numerals with the correctnumber of objects – blocks, animals, trees etc. However, a dyslexic maybe at risk of missing out on one or more stages of the learning process,

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and it is important that teachers check that this has not happened.Constant revision is virtually essential.

The teacher can then ask the pupil to put, say, two blocks on the table,add a further three blocks and then count up how many blocks there arealtogether. Then, when the pupil has really grasped what is happening,the teacher can say, ‘Now, shall we write down for the benefit of someoneelse what we have been doing? Write this number’ (point to a group oftwo blocks); ‘now write this number’ (point to a group of three blocks);‘and now write this number’ (point to the five blocks in combination).When the pupil has understood what is happening, it is then possible tointroduce the symbols ‘+’ (add) and ‘−’ (take away). All this needs to bedone slowly and systematically, with the pupil aware of the actual blocksbeing added or taken away.

Symbols for ‘multiply’ and ‘divide’ can then be introduced, withexplanations such as ‘two lots of three’ or ‘Share these blocks between sixchildren’. The important point is that all this is done after the real-lifeevent has taken place and its significance understood. What is dauntingfor dyslexic children is confronting them with a mass of symbols and notgiving them enough time even to learn their names, let alone appreciatetheir function. New symbols should always be introduced in an orderlyand systematic way.

Readers may also like to know that there is now in existencemultisensory software (Flynn, 1998), with which it is possible for thelearner to control the movement of blocks in a three-dimensionalenvironment. An account of what is happening is presented auditorilyand the appropriate visual symbols appear, such as ‘+’ and ‘=’ and therequisite numerals.

One occasionally finds that even older dyslexic children havesomehow missed out on the understanding of these basic mathematicalprinciples, and in Miles (2004) ways in which structured materials suchas Dienes blocks can be used to promote understanding are suggested. Atthis stage, too, it is possible to show the pupil that mathematics issomething to be enjoyed. Our number system contains all kinds ofregularities and patterns, for instance the fact that the successivemultiples of three are alternately odd and even numbers. Many dyslexicsare interested in such things and are likely to find the discovery of newpatterns and regularities very enjoyable.

What, then, can be learnt from all this about the teaching of musicalnotation?

It seems clear in the first place that those who teach music to dyslexicpupils of all ages should make them aware of the difference betweenmusic and musical notation: if they experience difficulty with the

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notation, this does not mean that they are incompetent musicians. It isalso important that musical notation should be taught slowly andsystematically and that the dyslexic learner should be allowed plenty oftime for the words and symbols (marks on the stave signifying pitch, clefsigns, time signatures etc.) to sink in. A multisensory approach isdescribed by Hubicki (2001), and it is hoped that actual materials will beappearing on the market in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime,teachers may like to join with the pupil in creating their own materials.These can be adapted according to the pupil’s needs. It may be enjoyable,for instance, for a young pupil to draw five lines so as to construct astave, write in the appropriate clef sign, write a succession of notes on thestave – perhaps, say, two crotchets in the first place, then, later, someminims, quavers etc. If one writes, for example, two crotchets on thestave, paying attention to one’s hand movements in writing them, andthen looks at the two marks on the stave and plays on an instrument asuccession of two notes, listening to each other carefully, there is likely tobe better memorisation than if the pupil stares at a visual mark inisolation, listens to a sound in isolation and writes nothing down.

Cardboard and glue may be useful so that the shapes of the symbolscan be handled. Pupils should speak the names of the symbols aloud asthey handle them and should listen carefully to the sound of their ownvoice as well as to the sounds of the notes which they have written.

The familiar mnemonics (‘Every good boy deserves food’, ‘Always comeearly Grandma’ etc.) can, of course, be used. In addition, however, it ispossible to take advantage of dyslexics’ skill in recognising regularities andpatterns. In her original Colour Staff, Hubicki (2001) gave each of the notesfrom A to G a different colour, corresponding to the colours of the spectrum– red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (indigo) and violet. Her intentionwas not to provide a new colour code – this would have been an extra loadon the dyslexic’s memory – but rather to highlight regularities of pattern.This is done by placing strips of coloured material on the lines and spacesof the stave. Thus, low G in the bass clef, which falls on a line, is colouredorange and low A, just above it, is coloured green. The next time the colourorange appears it is to represent the G immediately below middle C. Allnotes G are coloured orange, all notes A green and so on. It will be notedthat low G, which is on a line, requires a narrow strip, while the G above,which is on a space, requires a wide strip. There is the same regularityof pattern in the treble clef and in any ledger lines above the stave.

In the case of more advanced players who needed the alto or tenorclefs, the same principles can be applied. The order of the colours in thespectrum is allowed for, since orange is a fifth above red, yellow is a fifthabove orange, green is a fifth above yellow and so on.

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Once the function of a symbol has been learnt, there is reason to thinkthat the dyslexic is as capable as the non-dyslexic of putting thatknowledge to good use. It is therefore particularly important that amusically gifted dyslexic should not be put off taking up music becauseof early difficulties in the learning of musical notation.

References

Flynn, S.J.O. (1998) The Multimedia Interactive Calculator, Inclusive TechnologyLtd., Saddleworth Business Centre, Delph, Oldham, OL3 5DF.

Hubicki, M. (2001) A multisensory approach to the teaching of musical notation.In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors, T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds),Whurr, London.

Miles, T.R. (2004) The use of structured materials with older pupils. In: Dyslexiaand Mathematics, T.R. Miles and E. Miles (eds), RoutledgeFalmer, London.

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nine

The paperworkDiana Ditchfield

The paperwork watershed is often thought of as the Grade 5 theoryexamination. This is principally because it is often a qualifyingrequirement for proceeding to a Grade 6 practical examination. It is quitea reasonable examination if theory has been taught alongside, andpreferably in tandem with, learning to play a musical instrument, and iftheory has been steadily studied and examined. Some students take it intheir stride; for others it becomes an insurmountable hurdle. For somedyslexic students it is a very stressful hurdle. I often tell my students thatit is very easy to lose marks in theory – and usually these marks are loston things you actually know; this is regardless of whether a student isdyslexic or not.

It is indeed true that it is often necessary to organise several types ofinformation into one answer. For example, a question may require astudent to: (a) write a melodic minor scale (b) in the above rhythm (c)ascending (d) with key signature (e) beginning on the third (or mediant)degree of the scale (f) in the tenor clef. This is fraught with traps for thenon-dyslexic student, and so how much more for the dyslexic student,who may have weak organisational skills, be very anxious about doingan examination, may have already failed it twice, may not be very goodwith a pencil and/or writing between lines and has forgotten to bring apencil/pen, rubber and pencil sharpener? In addition, they haveforgotten a statement of dyslexia with the entry form, have arrived latebecause they muddled the time and have forgotten to bring theircandidate number.

I recall individually teaching an intelligent and very musical15-year-old boy who was an accomplished flute and violin player. He hadan excellent ear and could ‘hear’ his melodies. When doing practice



Music and Dyslexia

papers prior to the Grade 5 examination, he wrote an innovative butacceptable melody – until the last note, which was written G in the key ofF. We had a good and relaxed relationship that had developed over sometime where mutual trust was enjoyed; this allowed for the unbridledgiving and receiving of criticism that never provoked any kind ofresentment, and when I berated him, he replied, ‘But you knew I meantF!’ – which was perfectly true. He was somewhat clumsy with his penciland it was not unusual for his notes to slip up or down or even coverlines and spaces. However, his writing of G was incorrect and should bepenalised. I hoped that the statement of his dyslexia, which accompaniedhis entry form for the examination, would cover any error of this naturebecause a musical marker would be able to detect the good points of themelody attempt. In the event, he passed with a little to spare. Mindfulthat dyslexics often react particularly badly to the stress of examinations,it is possible they will make uncharacteristic mistakes in addition to thoseone might expect.

This scenario is merely a small part and a single example of somepaperwork problems that may face the dyslexic musician. In this case,carefully structured cumulative, multisensory and steady and sensitiveteaching – maybe individually, rather than in a class – should overcomeany problems with the Grade 5 theory examination, especially if the entryis actually accompanied by a statement of dyslexia and maybementioning any special requirements. It is, of course, very important toteach in a dyslexic-friendly manner: examining/assessing must beadjusted according to the specific difficulties of the particular dyslexic.Obviously, speaking metaphorically, there is no point in building a wallunless each layer of bricks is firmly and correctly established from thefoundation upwards. Personally, I have found it is sometimes helpful touse (not slavishly follow) Margaret Hubicki’s Colour Staff (Ditchfield,2001), particularly for ledger lines, and especially with students wholearn an instrument where the music is written on a single clef. SheilaOglethorpe (1996) has many suggestions about approaching teachingproblems in her book Instrumental Music for Dyslexics. There are alsosometimes alternative modes of assessment apart from sitting aconventional examination in theory – or, indeed, any other examination.Any assessment should inquire into the knowledge it is testing and notbe a vehicle to discover or prove dyslexia.

However, a dyslexic musician often has many other paperworkdifficulties apart from sitting the Grade 5 theory examination, and thischapter will comment on some of these and suggest ways of addressingthem. The sad fact is that these paperwork requirements, such as essaysor other written assignments, still preclude some music students and

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The paperwork

other individuals even getting onto the bottom rung of the ladder thatleads to where they want to be. Possibly one of the most difficult tasks forthe non-dyslexic helper of dyslexics is to understand how it is for them –and the dyslexic is always so encouraged when people do. It oftenamazes me to find the dyslexic so tolerant of, and even charitable to,those of us who cannot understand their differences. It must be appallingto feel a wall of concrete blocks in your way no matter how you try tofind a way through. Whichever way you try to proceed, a difficulty getsin your way. You want to do it just as the non-dyslexic, not just to showothers that you are not idiotic but also to go some way to getting whereyou want to be and doing what you know, deep down, that you are ableto do – and all of that before achieving well beyond your own vision andrealising your full potential. The frustration is unimaginable!

A dyslexic player of the French horn who attended a specialist musicschool at secondary level and then proceeded to a conservatoire neversucceeded in gaining any qualifications of any description in terms ofschool certificates or music diplomas. When he taught in a music school,his student attendance register was certainly not suitable as a legaldocument and he needed a great deal of peer support to make it evenlegible. He felt very inadequate as a result and had to battle withproblems associated with low self-esteem for many years. All this was inspite of the fact that he was enormously valued as an orchestral playerand teacher. When he played a Mozart horn concerto in a large concerthall, the audience was completely transported.

Dyslexics want to achieve on the same playing field where theirnon-dyslexics peers get where they want, even though they know theymay not fully demonstrate their real ability. Most dyslexics I know workat least twice as hard as many of their peers. They often go down blindalleys and take a very circuitous route to get on the road they seek. Formany who try to express themselves, they have an idea of what theywant to say/write but it does not come out in a format that makes sense;certainly it is often not in a format which is acceptable to the standardsset down for success in the areas in which they are making the attempt.

Those who try to help dyslexics get where they want often have to fisharound with the individual dyslexic to try and find out what it is theywant to say and help them say it in the way they want – and this is oftenon a sentence-by-sentence basis, and all before any organisationalstructure is apparent. It often takes a great deal of time but it is a greatprivilege for the helper/supporter if/when the dyslexic is content withthe ultimate end product. It means it is their, the dyslexic’s, work whichhas resulted in their own success. At the time of writing, this contributor isin awe of a young dyslexic student who has just achieved a perfect

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first-class degree – in a discipline which is almost unintelligible to thehelper/supporter. It is possible for dyslexics to handle the paperwork,but it is not easy.

Thus, self-esteem and self-confidence need to be fostered honestly. Thisoften means dyslexia is not a secret any more, and that is often a difficultfirst hurdle for the dyslexic. Even those of us who have worked withdyslexia for many years still do not fully understand the individualproblems associated with individual patterns of dyslexia; and how muchmore is this the case for those who are focused mostly on teaching theirown subject, even if they are genuinely also trying to be student-centred.Some are more willing than others to make the effort and accommodatethe ‘deviancy’ of dyslexia. In addition, there is a certain amount of trialand error by all involved in the teaching/learning experience. One factwhich is often present and not fully appreciated is that dyslexics oftentake a lot longer to learn and rehearse information sufficiently for it to besecurely stored in the long-term memory and be manipulated orreproducible. Peer and/or paired learning can be helpful for some; whileothers find it very stressful to work with others, even in group projects.

This non-dyslexic writer found co-ordinating the use of three organs, atreble and two bass clefs with two hands and two feet extremelyconfusing, especially when the pitch range of each and the verticalposition of where the music was to be played compared with the writtenpage was out of sync to her. Out of the blue, a colleague who overheard averbal recital of the impossibility of playing the organ said, ‘Think of thefeet as playing in the tenor clef’, and suddenly the problems recededconsiderably. It was an accidental success. I was reminded of trying toteach theory to a 7-year-old accomplished Suzuki violin player whoseemed unable to understand that there were two minims in a semibreveand two crotchets in a minim and so on. The rest of the class escapedtummy ache in spite of eating many halves and quarters of apples forabout six weeks. Suddenly, out of the blue, the young violin playerannounced, ‘I understand, there are two half notes in a whole note.’ Ithought I had explained that! Realisation came when she was ready. Theelement of shooting in the dark should not be shunned by anybody.

Additionally, because dyslexics often process certain types ofinformation more slowly than non-dyslexics, time should be allowed forit to be taken on board. If a lesson or lecture is proceeding quickly, adyslexic may miss a second bit of information before the first bit ofinformation has got sorted. In first and/or secondary school, the studentmay switch off and give up because any additional information thatfollows and requires the building block of the piece of information theyhave missed is nonsense to them; it adds to confusion and possibly

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distress. One effect is that these students may need extra time forassignments because they have to fill in the gaps afterwards, in one wayor another. However, a delay in submitting assignments needs to bebalanced against falling behind timetabled requirements where there is alimited degree of flexibility. Given the negative effect of stress ondyslexics (Miles and Varma, 1995; Peer, 2003), extra time should beavailable for examinations even if it is not taken up.

One of the first requirements is to help the helpers. The would-behelper needs the correct objectives concerning, and clear informationabout, the area being studied by the dyslexic student. This meansinformation such as access to textbooks, lecture material, assessmentrequirements, lesson/seminar interaction – and this may imply videoand/or audiotaped lessons or a peer note-taker. None of these needs isimpossible, but they do need co-operation. Where a student programmeis very full, it becomes imperative to carefully balance time and lifestyleand to make choices. Aural/oral presentation may be a useful and fairalternative tool, particularly if a musician is permitted to use a practicalinstrument to support them.

A further requirement is material that is accessible to the dyslexic. Some-times, audio/videotaped music and musical scores, books and journals areneeded. Assistive and information technology may be required; it is oftenexpensive but it can make all the difference to the dyslexic. Larger printmay be sufficient but the use of other aids such as coloured or computer-generated filters or, for example, Irlen lenses may be useful for somedyslexics. Where there are essay requirements, the ability to use a computercan change the picture entirely for some dyslexics. Although not infallible,Spell-check and syntactic support are often useful – as are calculators andthe relatively free use of the photocopier. These supports can assist accuracywhere there is risk of inaccuracy and its effects. However, it is worth re-membering that sometimes the implication is that the student has, in effect,to study two courses – one in the subject being studied and the second inthe use of the technology by which to access the former. The use of a readerand/or scribe may assist some dyslexics, although, in this case, additionalphysical space needs to be taken into consideration and the fact that thestudent has to be willing to be seen as being not the same as their peers.

There is a wealth of software that can help dyslexics with their theorywork, including inputting speech into a document, for reading text andpointing to the errors of the dyslexic writer and helping them organise allaspects of their work. Having said that, some of the software is quitecomplicated and requires time to learn it or help with using it. Dragonand Kurzweil have been the tools for success for some dyslexics whowould not have achieved otherwise. Computer Touch programs suit

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others. The music-processing system Sibelius has released musicalcreative gifts which would remain locked up in its absence. Computerstructures such as the PowerPoint system, Excel or Access and othershave helped some dyslexics, whereas they would be a confusinghandicap for others. There are now too many to mention and thesetechnologies are increasing and improving by the day; many are also age-and stage-related. When considering the dyslexic musician, it isappropriate that the emphasis should be on multisensory approaches.

One of the wonderful side effects of being dyslexic is being able,because of creative tendencies, to solve one’s own problems. This writerrecalls working with a 17-year-old exam student who was trying toremember a list of difficult but essential technical words. No attempt toprovide a skeleton structure seemed useful and it was therefore a greatshock the following week when the student was able to reproduce themall without error. When asked how she had done it, I was amazed to hearthat she had devised her own ingenious mnemonic. Mnemonics areuseful learning tools, although too many can simply add more confusion.It is also worth remembering that all individuals, whether dyslexic or not,favour some learning styles and strategies over others. While noneshould be excluded, where time and energy are limited it makes sense touse the favoured style. Success encourages success. However, in thatthere is a tendency for the dyslexic to have a focused way of takinginformation on board and reproducing it, it may be that a good teachercan suggest alternative approaches at times.

Is there a place for failure? This is a double-edged sword. When beinginterviewed for his contribution to Miles and Westcombe (2001), NigelClarke told of an experience when, early in his musical career, he knew hewould fail an examination. He decided therefore that he might as well failwhen using one of his own musical compositions. He did fail theexamination. However, the examiner was diverted by the composition,and it was one of the milestones that helped Nigel embark on hissuccessful career as a composer. Sometimes, failure can lead to analternative route or goal where the eventual success may be exactly thesame or much greater. It is a sensitive issue. People often unwittinglyoverwhelm dyslexics – even when that is the last thing they would wantto do – and damage (sometimes irreparable) can be done. On the otherhand, failure may be a pivotal experience in facing up to problems andobtaining the necessary help to prevent it in future.

A chapter of this length cannot be comprehensive. It is designed to raisepaperwork problems that can affect dyslexic musicians and suggest theyare not insurmountable if all concerned deal with them with realistically.

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References

Ditchfield, D. (2001) Dyslexia and music. In: Dyslexia: Successful Inclusion in theSecondary School, L. Peer and G. Reid (eds), David Fulton/BDA, London.

Miles, T.R. and Varma, V. (eds) (1995) Dyslexia and Stress, Whurr, London.Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (eds) (2001) Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,

Whurr, London.Oglethorpe, S. (1996) Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook, Whurr,

London.Peer, L. (2003) Dyslexia: not a condition to die for. In: The Dyslexia Handbook,

M. Johnson and P. Lindsay (eds), BDA, London.

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Sight-readingSheila Oglethorpe

Before we look at some ideas for helping dyslexic pupils with thepeculiar challenges of sight-reading, it is worth noting that not everydyslexic pupil has more difficulty than a non-dyslexic pupil whenlearning to read at sight. There are some whose dyslexic traits affect themin areas of the brain that are not needed for sight-reading skills. Forexample, a dyslexic pupil may have an extremely short auditory memoryfor speech. This does not necessarily impinge on their ability to see a lineof notes and reproduce the sounds on their instrument correctly. Theselucky people are rare, although there is no doubt that they do exist.

Sight-reading words, sight-readingmusic

The process of learning to read music at sight has many morecomplications than learning to read words at sight, though the first twostages of reading either might be compared in a small way.

It is now widely agreed that the process of learning to read words atsight is roughly divided into three stages:

1. whole-pattern recognition2. letter–sound conversion3. the application of spelling rules and conventions.



Sight-reading

It has been suggested (Frith, 1985) that dyslexics are delayed in reachingthe second stage (letter–sound conversion).

It can be argued that for music there is no stage one, no patternrecognition. The beginner reader of text has little words like ‘and’, ‘the’,‘is’ and so on that will have to be learnt as a whole word withoutanalysing why they sound the way they do. There is no direct parallel forthe beginner sight-reader of music; they have to go straight to stage two,letter (or symbol) to sound conversion, which is the very stage thatdyslexic readers of text find so difficult to reach. In addition to analysingthe pitch of the notes, there are the complications of the pulse beat andthe rhythm, not to mention all the performance directions and so on.

Patient, systematic teaching in the classroom is likely to get a dyslexicpupil to a reasonable standard of proficiency in reading. If sight-readingmusic were as important to everyday life as is reading text, then perhapsthe same amount of time and energy and patient systematic teachingapplied to music would produce as much fluency as it does forsight-reading words. Sight-reading music is possible, but it needs a hugeamount of dedication. However, not being able to sight-read adequatelyis not a bar to learning to play a piece of music, and there is nocorrespondence between musical talent and fluency in sight-reading.

Preparation

We know that reading well at sight is only achieved after a great deal ofpractice, but there are some who have seemingly impenetrabledifficulties. Good preparation in all the normally accepted ways(choosing a sensible pulse beat, noting the time and key signature,looking out for accidentals, articulation and so on) should be undertakenif it is feasible but not necessarily when the pupil has an extremely poorshort-term memory, which many dyslexics have. Too much time spent onthis is not worth the trouble and can actually be counter-productivebecause it is so demoralising for a dyslexic when in performance theyforget everything they have so painstakingly prepared. Dyslexics who areterrified of making mistakes and paralysed by the sight of a piece ofmusic which they cannot recognise as a tune really need to learn to get onwith it and not worry too much. More practice at this is a betterexpenditure of their energy than all that careful preparation.

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Orientation at the keyboard

Many things are involved when sight-reading (courage being one ofthem!) but the more I see and hear of dyslexic pianists the more I believethat those with the worst problems are the ones who have been taught towork out all the letter names of the notes before playing them. For theplayer of a wind instrument with only one line of notes to follow, it isprobably essential to know the letter names. These should be taughtmultisensorily, of which more later, but for a pianist, provided that theyknow how to find the notes on the keyboard in each hand, it is my beliefthat knowing what they are called is actually superfluous. The only wayto cope is to listen and read by interval.

It is confusing and slow when sight-reading to work out what the lettername of every note is, for two reasons: (1) the treble and bass staves referto a different set of letter names and (2) there are lots of Gs, on thekeyboard, for example – which is the correct one? To overcome this, thedyslexic must have a readily accessible point of reference. In other words,they must know where they are.

The quickest way to find notes on the keyboard in the early stages is tohome in on the middle lines in both clefs. The pupil should sit centrally atthe keyboard with hands dangling at their sides. Next, the hands arelifted onto the keyboard in a direct forward line from the danglingposition. They will automatically land either on, or extremely near, thebass and treble middle line notes. The left-hand D is the easier to identifybecause of the neat way it sits between the two black notes. Theright-hand B is harder to remember, and pupils need to be encouraged touse their own imagination to help them establish firmly in their mindsexactly where it is. (It can be useful later on to point out that if there is oneflat in the key signature it is going to be the nearest black note to that Band all other Bs on the keyboard. Letter names will inevitably creep in,and so they should, but at this stage it is still unnecessary to know whatthey are. Knowing that the first flat is the highest of the three black notesgroup will do.)

Sight-reading material

Having established a link between the middle line in each clef, and whereto place the hands on the keyboard, the very best material for

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sight-reading at the beginning, in order to create that sense of securityfrom which more adventurous music can emanate, is invariably thatwhich the teacher has tailor-made for the pupil he or she knows reallywell. Many excellent sight-reading books are on the market, but keepthese for later on when the pupil has begun to feel that it may be difficultbut not impossible.

Sight-reading with hands together

The teacher should write plenty of tunes using only the lines on the staves,hands together but not going outside a five-note compass at first. The pupilscans through the piece in order to identify the highest and the lowestnotes in both hands so that they can decide which fingers to start with.

The initial aim should be to enforce the recognition of thirds and fifths.The tunes should be written on jumbo-sized manuscript paper and keptextremely short – not more than four bars long, thereby making it possiblefor the sight-reader to see the end and, with luck, not make too many errors.Every time the pupil manages to complete a four-bar exercise correctly willbe a step towards greater confidence. When, with reading hands together,recognition of thirds and fifths on lines has been established, it is a fairlysimple matter to transfer to the same idea using the spaces, though one doescome across the dyslexic pupil who prefers either one or the other. Onlywhen the pupil is happy using both lines and spaces should passing notesbe incorporated. Very gradually, other intervals can be brought into play,but these should always be practised with hands together so that the habitof reading hands in both clefs at once becomes more and more automatic.

Key signatures

All foundations for good sight-reading have to be laid at the start ofthe process of learning to read music. Unfortunately, it is only too easy tooverload a dyslexic pupil with information for which they seem to haveno appropriate storage space in the memory. Careful consideration shouldbe given to what to teach and what to leave out. Time signatures are, ofcourse, very important, as are key signatures. It is frequently the key sig-nature that gives the most trouble when sight-reading, but there is a verysimple pattern on the keyboard which holds good for all the first five sharps

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or flats. For sharps, the order starts with the lowest of the three black notesgroup, followed by the lowest of the two black notes group, which is fol-lowed by the next lowest of each group in zigzag fashion until all the blacknotes are used up. For flats, the process starts with the highest note of thegroups and works in reverse. Knowing this means that the pupil just has tocount the number of flats or sharps in the key signature and rehearse themon the keyboard without worrying about their names. They can also easilywork out what the keynote of the piece is by going to the nearest white noteabove the last sharp they have just played, or, for flats, by going back oneblack note from the end of the zigzag pattern that they have just workedout. F major is the exception, as there is only one black note. If the pupilputs their third finger on it and then slides it down onto the white note asemitone below and adds the first and fifth finger, they have made the keychord. Dyslexics should be reminded that it is the lowest note of the triadthat gives the chord its name. The chord stands on its letter name.

Rhythm

Quite often, a dyslexic pupil will find that the rhythm of the piece is themost difficult aspect to grasp. Tapping or clapping it first can be helpful,for all instrumentalists, but asking a dyslexic to count aloud at the sametime is often too much. By all means, set the beat going with a steady tapof the foot, but numbers are best left out of the exercise. Having notedwhat indications of speed the composer has written at the beginning ofthe piece, the sight-reader then has to decide which speed they arecapable of achieving. Before setting out, it is essential to think through thewhole of at least one bar, establishing the steady pulse beat. Whatever theinstrument, it may be a good idea to have some sort of rehearsal first, notof the whole piece but at least of the bit that looks the most difficult. Stringplayers can pluck the tune through before adding the complications ofbowing. Woodwind players can finger the notes without blowing. Thispractice is not, unfortunately, any good for brass players, but at least theyshould look out for danger areas and may need to clap rhythms.

Co-ordination on the piano

Sometimes a piano pupil who has difficulty understanding how what isgoing on in one hand fits with what is going on in the other may find it

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helpful, even amusing, to turn the music on its side. Provided that it isturned 90 degrees in a clockwise direction, it can then be read down thepage in columns. What is seen on the right is then tapped by the righthand while the left hand taps the notes on the left. It is unlikely that thedyslexic will want to perform with the music in this position, but it canhelp them to get a feel for how the hands co-ordinate. Whichever way upit is, it is surprising how often the note tails seem to interfere with howthe pupil perceives the synchronisation of the hands. You can sometimesalleviate this by suggesting that they mark with a highlighter pen wherethe hands play together in a tricky bit.

Learning note names multisensorily

Returning to note names, the woodwind player who equates the lettername of a note and its position on the stave with a particular fingeringmust be absolutely sure of both before reading at sight proficiently is apossibility. Many a pupil will have learnt to play a piece of musickinaesthetically, that is they will have taught their fingers what to do,without having really grasped what the notes are called. They willrecognise what it feels like to produce the sounds that make up the tune,but may well flounder when required to play just the same sounds in adifferent order and rhythm. They may have learnt the progression offinger movements but not considered the names of the notes beyond thepoint where they were originally worked out, particularly in adescending passage where the alphabet is sequenced backwards. Thebrass player tends to be guided much more than other instrumentalistsby their ear, and the pianist by their spatial ability, but it is very importantfor the woodwind player that all letter names of notes be over-learneduntil they are established beyond doubt.

A multisensory approach is the best way to instil confidence with letternames, and a stave drawn on the floor with masking tape is one of thebest tools one can use. ‘Jump to a B on a line! Jump to an E in a space!Jump to the octave E below!’ There are many ways to use this aid, all ofwhich can be fun. If the space is not available, one can make a board withfelt, or hardboard, and place felt or Plasticine notes on it, but this is not asgood as the floor stave because it is less multisensory: the whole body isnot involved. I also use a metal tray on which I have the representation ofa stave and little magnetic discs to represent notes. These can be easilyand cleanly moved around, perhaps to spell words or to make tunes and

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so on. Whatever method of learning the note names is used, it is alwaysimportant to equate them with the sounds and intervals they represent.

Making music

There is not time to do everything. A dyslexic person who is moreworried about the notes should try to get used to leaving some of themout rather than allow the pulse beat to suffer. For pianists, duets can beextremely helpful in encouraging this. For other instrumentalists, someaccompaniment is highly recommended. The exercise then begins to feelmore like making music. Some pupils respond well when it is suggestedthat they just play the first note in each bar. It helps them to track througha line of music to the next strong beat without worrying. Stronglyrhythmic music is best for this. Gradually, they can be encouraged to fillin the other beats, but only step by step, not attempting too much at atime and still leaving out anything that they do not feel ready for.

All the strategies to alleviate difficulties with the score that a teacherwould normally use for a dyslexic pupil (enlarging, printing ontocoloured paper etc.) should also be used when teaching sight-reading.Note that such aids can now be used in examinations too. The AssociatedBoard of the Royal Schools of Music (2007), in its ‘Guidelines forcandidates with dyslexia or other learning difficulties’, allows for suchthings as large notation tests, larger font for performance directions,tinted overlays or coloured paper and also extra time for preparation.

To suggest that the implementation of the ideas above is going to creategood sight-readers among all dyslexic pupils would be to hold out falsehopes and engender false expectations. One simply has to try everythingand see what works best. Fear of the unknown can be so paralysing, andso one has to offer the dyslexic something that they can hold onto andwhich will give them that very necessary courage to go on. One neverknows what is going to trigger the unlocking of a door, but everythingthat one can think of, or possibly that one’s pupil can think of, is worth atry, provided that each experiment is given time. It will not be any goodskipping from idea to idea without establishing a steady routine andallowing time for new practices to take effect. One thing is certain: formany dyslexics, sight-reading is usually hard work, but it is frequentlythe dyslexic who knows that they have to work extra hard to achievetheir aims who is the most dedicated. If they find that they can actuallyenjoy sight-reading, all that dedication will have been worthwhile.

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References

Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (2007) Guidelines for candidateswith dyslexia or other learning difficulties, http://www.abrsm.org/exams/specialNeeds/ (and then follow the links), accessed 17 July, 2007.

Frith, U. (1985) Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In: J.C. Marshall,K.E. Patterson and M. Coltheart (eds), Surface Dyslexia in Adults and Children,Laurence Erlbaum, Brighton.

Cameo Three

Personal observations of dyslexic pupils in bothliteracy and music skills

Margaret Howlett-Jones

Eye movements: I’ve watched some pupils’ eyes not moving in a directline across the page. There is a jerky to-and-fro movement as thoughreading and re-reading. One sometimes has the impression that read-ing right to left would be preferable. I have also observed readingand spelling where the end of the word is dealt with first. This canresult in hearing the last sound most clearly and create confusion infrequently used words.

Underlining words (probably also connected to eye movementsabove): the pupil, not always left-handed, most frequently under-lines from right to left; so for ‘truck’, the first sound connected to theunderlining is ‘ck’.

Transpositions: these can be of words, syllables, notes or phrases, andmust have some connection with the above.

Following on: that is reading on from one line to the next. Some pupilsfind this really difficult. This again refers back to eye movementsand connects with the fact that slow readers are not anticipating thesequence of words/notes and therefore not ‘searching’ the sequel inthe same way as able readers.

Inner turmoil (a very personal view!)

I believe that this comes about via the compensatory factors thatdyslexics resort to in order to be seen to be equal to their peers. In the

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early years of schooling, the comparison of pupils’ reading skills iswell exposed, and feelings of inadequacy can set in. The more brightand forthright can develop means of covering up; some act the partof the capable reader but are not tracking at the correct speed. Thisbecomes habitual and the reading becomes fault-ridden, withnear-words, reversals and guesses from the initial letter noticeable. Itreminds one of the camouflage tactic employed when the pupil is‘fed up with sight-reading this piece every lesson’ and attempts tomemorise the piece to avoid that.

In a calm one-to-one situation and with the use of a metronome, itis possible to slow the reading, keeping a constant flow, at a pacewhere the pupil achieves greater accuracy. The panic is not evidentand an honest, unhurried version is provided. This is a helpful line ofaction for the pupil to embrace; indeed, it may be a life-long tactic,especially when reading instructions, or in a timed test where specialconsiderations cannot be organised.

I can think of piano pupils who had the above reading faults forthe same reason. The metronome was invaluable.

It is advisable:� not to remark, in the pupil’s hearing, on differences between thespecial-needs pupil and their colleagues, as the difference may beconstrued as criticism� to use the term ‘tidying up’: this indicates that there is a bedrock ofinescapables in music-reading which need to be accepted, but that,little by little, the incorrect can be dealt with� to use ‘well done’ (spoken with degrees of enthusiasm and surpriseat times!): it is essential to the learner’s self-esteem; successes shouldbe noted and charted� to pursue a ‘keep moving’ approach: many dyslexic children find apurely academic set of exercises a turn-off, but an exercise turned intoa game is infinitely more memorable and successful in operation;therefore, hunting, pairing, fitting shapes, saying out loud withchants, singing, miming and more can be applied� to apply a light touch: as above, responding to a dire piece ofplaying/writing with a gentle joke often allows a businesslikeattempt to improve that section.

The ‘no assumptions made’ department

Do not assume that concepts like high and low have been taken onboard by dyslexics. The same applies to comparisons. Just because a

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dyslexic knows the word ‘down’ (which they may first have noticedthrough dog vocabulary), it does not follow that they know that‘town’ has the same sound-ending, similarly with musical patterns,sequences and intervals.

It can be a painstaking procedure, with the sound needing to beheard, with the saying of the word, felt by the mouth, seen andwritten in the best multisensory way.

Similarly, some fail to see the likeness of intervals and phrases inmusic. The aural impression is usually the strongest, so that, whennotation needs to be attended to:� listening, singing, playing� comparing with like shape in the (perhaps enlarged) manuscript�highlighting the repeat of patterns etc.

can be the answer.

And the ‘minor triumphs’ department

Amy (7+) at a recorder class:‘You mean to say that every time I see a note on the middle line, it’s

B with one finger – every time?’The combination of requirements, the dependability of the music

notation system and pleasure at discovery are filtering across to thisnon-reader’s music!

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eleven

Sight-readingand memory

Michael Lea

In this chapter, I offer some thoughts arising from dyslexia research onwhy I could only memorise on one instrument, the guitar, and onlysight-read on another, the cello.

Listening to music is self-evidently an aural process. For the performer,music is a tactile as well as an aural process. Music to the performer has asound and a feel. I think of music in part as a structure, with time addedto the space, music being multi-dimensional and multi-stranded. It is astructure to be physically and mentally explored, understood and created.

In Western classical music, there are usually two parts to theproduction of music: the composer who creates the piece and writesdown the notes and the performer who interprets and performs thenotes, bringing to the role their own interpretive insights and experience.Either or both roles surely must appeal to dyslexics of every type, withtheir ability to be comfortable with multi-spatial thoughts and actions.

As a professional classical double bass player, I have long pridedmyself on my sight-reading ability. This ability enables me not only toplay the notes but also to perform at sight while playing in manydifferent styles. This natural ability first surfaced when I was a choristerat Salisbury Cathedral. In those days we sang eight services a week, 44weeks a year, with little repetition of music.

In contrast to my sight-reading skills, my natural memorising skills arepoor. I have, though, in recent years acquired an expertise in memorising.While I can now memorise with confidence, it is still only the result of agreat deal of focused effort. In order to memorise a piece, I relearn a pieceagain from the beginning without music, having first learnt the piecewith music. For me, learning to play a piece and memorising a piece aretwo separate processes.



Sight-reading and memory

I can remember, aged 10, thinking there must be some trick tomemorising. I resolved to make sure that one day I would find out thattrick. At school I had had great difficulty memorising anything, such asspellings, vocabulary, names and dates. My writing was an illegiblescrawl with many crossings out. I learnt much later that I was dyslexic. Iwish I had known when young that sounding out loud what I needed toremember works. I wish I had known then that this works even better ifyou write at the same time as sounding out loud.

It is known that dyslexics may be poor at reading musical notation andmay be poor at memorising music. However, the particular difficultiesthat an individual dyslexic can have vary widely from individual toindividual, often with paradoxical effects. Music and Dyslexia: OpeningNew Doors, edited by Miles and Westcombe (2001), provides evidence ofthese effects.

Back in 1965 I was studying the cello and the guitar at the GuildhallSchool of Music. This was before I switched to playing the double bass. Itcame as a big surprise to me to find that on the guitar I was very poor atsight-reading and good at memorising. This puzzled me as I had long feltdisadvantaged because of my lack of memorising skills on all otherinstruments.

At that time I could easily read music, but my playing skills on thecello were not advanced enough to be able to play everything I couldread. Of the passages I found difficult, some I was not able to play at all.Others, less difficult, I found a way around, making the effect any way Icould. In the easiest passages I was able to relax while playing and thinkof the sound, technique or matters of musical and ensemble interest. Asmy playing skills increased and more passages became easy, I was able toadd in more musical and ensemble interest while playing at sight.

On the guitar everything was complicated and new. The movementsinvolved when playing the guitar centre on the fingers. This co-ordinationbetween the fingers of each hand is complex. My teacher taught me topractise with a metronome going at the speed at which everythingworked comfortably. This might be very slow indeed. If there was anyhesitation, then the metronome would be put on even slower. Everyfingering was precisely worked out in both hands. For the right hand,which plucked the strings, I was taught to say out loud which finger wasbeing used, particularly when playing scales and similar exercises. Tosight-read while doing all these things was clearly impossible, as everynote had to be right before the next one could be played.

In contrast, on the cello, while I was learning technique in a similarway to the guitar, I could also lose myself in the sound and sensation ofplaying long bows on open strings. The neurological messages were

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perhaps more diffuse, involving complex movements in the arms,different parts of the bow as well as different parts of the string. Thesweeps of the bow were a much freer way of playing than the guitar. Iwas, however, visually locked onto the music on the music stand.Without the music in view, I would panic and be lost, even while playingmusic I knew well.

I do not think it can be much of a surprise to anyone familiar withOrton–Gillingham techniques for teaching dyslexics literacy skills(Gillingham and Stillman, 1969) that my memory was being activatedwhen playing the guitar. I was having to concentrate on every note inboth hands. I was saying out loud what I needed to remember. I wasbuilding up my technique step by step. This was structured, multisensorylearning. However, I do not think this in itself explains why I was unableto memorise on the cello and unable to sight-read on the guitar, for I wasapplying similar techniques to learning the cello.

It might be thought that, on the guitar, there is a reliance on musclememory for rote learning where it is quite a complex task to convertmarks on a stave to the right muscular movements. In contrast themovements when playing the bass, at least in the case of the right arm, thebowing arm, are relatively coarse and therefore not such a cognitive loadwhen it comes to sight-reading, but as there is not so much fine-muscularmemory involved, memorisation on the bass is more difficult.

Aural memory linked to muscle memory is a powerful combinationthat clearly aided my memorising skills on the guitar. The fingers in bothhands are in direct contact with the strings; so the neurologicalconnections are direct. It would be expected that harpists and guitaristsmight have a memory advantage here over string players using a bow. Insupport of this I observe that pop guitarists can be seen alwaysperforming from memory while the string players playing alongsidethem generally play from music.

However, while I think that there is greater scope for neurologicalconfusion playing the bass, there being more moving parts, I would liketo think that the sensitivities involved in playing a bass are as welldeveloped as on any instrument. As a bass player I have reservationswith the idea that bowing on the bass is relatively coarse. While this ideais perhaps understandable to some, given the seeming unwieldiness of abass bow, I would suggest that the bow of every stringed instrument,when first learning to play, is relatively coarse compared with using thefingers directly, as when playing the guitar or harp. Additionally, it is thecase that some bass players are good at memorising; so I do not think alack of facility at memorising is linked to a particular instrument. I notetoo that muscular memory is important in playing an instrument,

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Figure 11.1. An illustration of a cortical homunculus. (Reproduced from O.L.Zangwill’s A Modern Introduction to Psychology, published by Methuen & Co,London, p. 101.)

whether playing from music or from memory. I suggest therefore that it isnecessary to look deeper into the processes of playing an instrument foran explanation of why I was able to memorise easily on the guitar andsight-read fluently on the bass.

The relative degree of cognitive load is perhaps significant. Looking atthe diagram of a cortical homunculus (Figure 11.1), which shows thebody in the proportions of its neurological input, the differing and largesizes of the fingers and thumbs immediately catch the eye, as does thesmall size of the arms. It is of interest too that there is a significantcognitive load in the shoulders, both hands and shoulders beingimportant in playing a bass.

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The large size of the thumb, followed by the lesser, but still significant,size of the first and fourth fingers, would seem to have all kinds ofimplications for playing the bass. For instance, the famousnineteenth-century virtuoso bass player Bottesini mainly used thesefingers. From study of an original copy of Bottesini’s Complete Method forDouble Bass,1 it can be seen that, in the half position, Bottesini playedsemitones using the fingers one and four and he extended the fingers oneand four for tones. His use of the thumb enabled him to climb all over thehighest reaches of the bass with ease.

If we look at Bottesini’s own solo music, which is designed to beplayed in public from memory, we see that he never replays anyrepetitions in the music in the same way. Even when the notes might bethe same in separate passages, he has a different phrasing or bowing todifferentiate the passages. This means that in the pressure of performancehe always knew where he was and could never find himself on a memoryloop. I suggest that Bottesini was thus exploiting his neurologicalstrengths to maximise his memory.

I would add that until printed sheet music was widely available inrecent times pupils had to copy out what they wished to study beforethey were able to start to play it. Bottesini went further and composed hisown music to suit, and develop, his own playing. I think there might beimplications here for modern classical playing in comparison with popmusicians, who do compose and copy, and are I suggest as a resultfocused and direct. I note again that pop musicians are always seenperforming what are often highly programmed and complex pieceswithout music.

These thoughts are still all to do with playing, whether improvising,memorising or sight-reading. I suggest that it is necessary to continue tolook further for an explanation of the differing abilities to sight-read ormemorise on different instruments.

Consider the concept of the hare and the tortoise, often used todescribe different types of dyslexia. The hare tears along, covering theground lightly, seeing an overview of the terrain and adjusting at speed.The tortoise, whose mind can be working just as fast, travels slowly,examining every blade of grass and every minor variation in the ground.The hare might well see different features every time he goes past, makingmemorising of detail difficult, while the view of the tortoise, beingcomprehensive, is much more consistent, allowing detail to be easily

1 Bottesini, G. Complete Method for Double Bass. The original edition in English, rareand out of print, shows Bottesini’s own fingering system. Modern editions, whilekeeping the notes, have the fingerings changed to those of the editors.

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memorised. The hare does remember all kinds of things about the pieceand is able to see all kinds of connections, but the process of being able toplay the piece from memory might be difficult. This analogy seems to meto work well with musicians, the hare picking out the notes he needs toland on to keep going and the tortoise covering every note exhaustively.

On the guitar, I was a tortoise. I never achieved the lift-off of the hare.On the guitar, I was methodically playing in time to a metronome. Thedetailed messages that I was receiving were all clearly and closelydefined. In addition, my amazement at being able to memorise made merelaxed about memorising, which in itself helped. These factors aidedmemory.

Referring back to the diagram of the cortical homunculus, I note thesize of the eyes. Could the eyes be in some way a negative influencehindering memorising? I am told it is the case that blind people find theirother senses have quickened as blindness progresses. In order tomemorise, I have to put away the music and feel my way through a piececompletely afresh, as though blind. This perhaps centres my thoughtsback onto my fingers in a more intense and different way than whenplaying from music. I become intensely aware of the feel and position ofmy fingers on the strings and the hair of the bow on the strings. Allyingthis strong feel with the sound that emerges and the musical demandsbeing made perhaps reinforces the neurological message aiding memory.

A less-well-known use of the eyes is the use made of sight by peoplewith a deteriorating sense of balance, perhaps as a result of neurologicaldeterioration, as in multiple sclerosis. As well as using their hands tolightly touch something so that balance can be achieved rather than theirweight supported, they might use their eyes to ‘hold onto’ a wall. Theyare using their sight to maintain balance and can have difficultiesstanding upright with their eyes closed or in the dark. Isn’t this similar insome way to the musician who is ‘lost’ without the music in front ofthem, even when playing music which has long been familiar to them?

I suggest too that a further understanding of the use of the eyes mightbe found that also links in with dyslexia, for isn’t there a connection withthe visual short-term memory, a memory that is typically weak indyslexics? Orton–Gillingham techniques (Gillingham and Stillman, 1969)for teaching literacy skills are aimed at directly accessing the long-termmemory. An example is learning a letter. The teacher writes a large letterfilling a single sheet of paper. If, for example, the letter is A, the teachersays out loud the name of the letter, an example of the letter and thesound of the letter – ‘A, Apple, a’ – at the same time as writing the letter.The pupil, using a different coloured crayon each time, copies over theletter saying the same words in the same sequence. Finally, the pupil

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closes their eyes and writes the same letter. The pupil’s blindfold versionwill follow closely the line of the previous versions. The motor memory isestablished, linked to the sight and sound of the letter. The difference inemphasis and feel can be experienced by writing a letter in the air, firstwith the eyes open and then with the eyes closed.

When learning the cello, I was trying to create immediacy betweenseeing a note on the page, making the appropriate movements andhearing the sound. This is something of the same effect as a typist copyinga letter with creative and interpretive elements added in. The typist istyping by feel while looking at a separate piece of paper. On the cello, myeyes were fixed on the music looking for the tiniest clues; my ears werefixed on what I was playing and what was happening around me. Thus, acircle was created in which memory of the printed music need play littlepart. Neither was I looking at where I was playing on the instrument.

On the guitar, I was looking at the music and my fingers. Guitarfingering and hand shapes being complicated, perhaps looking at thefingers and thus involving the eyes, as well as linking the actions with thesounds, completed the memory circle. The printed music was soondispensed with.

Thus, my suggested explanation is that there is a general approach toplaying that accesses in some way completely different and separatethought processes, enabling sight-reading skills to predominate.Similarly, I suggest that there are distinct and separate thought processesfor memorising skills. I suggest that the differing uses of the eyes areimportant to each approach.

In my case I was forced into memorising by the particular demands ofplaying the guitar, while on the cello my aim was to learn to play themusic from the printed notes as fluently as possible. Before studying theguitar, I simply did not know that it was possible to access my memory,as a result of not knowing the technique of how to do so and not havingthe confidence to know it was possible. It was completely outside myexperience. My compensating skill on the cello was that I developed mysight-reading.

To illustrate this further, when in conversation with musicians whohave a photographic memory, it is striking to me that they describeremembering the page as though they are experiencing every detail of itin the same way as experiencing being in a room. Thus, instead ofnoticing the position of the furniture as they would if in a room, theyremember the physical nature of the paper, the print, the position of thestaples etc. I suggest it is their experiential memory that is beingactivated. They are in a sense inside the print and the paper.

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Thus, is understanding the differing uses of the eyes in relation to theexperiential memory the key? Is it this that helps determine whether theplayer is naturally a tortoise or a hare on their instrument with thecorresponding implications for memorising and sight-reading? Can theneurological balance be tipped in one way or other by the varying use ofthe eyes, either as a result of the demands of the instrument or as part ofthe particular make-up of the individual, or both? I suggest it is, and, yes,it can be. Certainly, I learn first to play a piece with the music in front ofme. Then, I put away the music and learn the piece again from thebeginning from memory. Finally, I learn the piece a third timeconcentrating on performance and musical matters. I am then ready toperform in public with, or without, music, solos without music, ensembleplaying with music.

I hope I have provided information that is helpful to others who mightbe interested to take these thoughts further and perhaps in differentdirections and for those musicians wishing to develop their sight-readingor memorising skills. I hope too that non-musicians looking at dyslexictraits in these situations, outside their personal experience andinvolvement, may be helped in their understanding of dyslexia, with itsvarying difficulties and compensating advantages.

For me, learning to memorise has brought additional confidence to myplaying in the orchestra, particularly in exposed or solo passages.Accessing the different processes involved in memorising has added anextra dimension to my playing, as does just knowing what it feels like toplay from memory. Studying dyslexic learning techniques has given meideas that I would not otherwise have had, and reinforced what I hadfound worked using trial and error. I now know that I can memorise if Iwish to, an option that I did not have at all when young.

References

Gillingham, A. and Stillman, B.E. (1969) Remedial Training for Children with SpecificDifficulty in Reading, Spelling, and Penmanship, Educators Publishing Service,Cambridge, MA.

Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (eds) (2001) Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,Whurr, London.

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twelve

Ten top tipsand thoughts

Nigel Clarke

1. Find out what you are good at and work hard to develop that skill.Don’t let others knock you off course. Life is not a race: it’s the endproduct that counts.

2. Be open about your problem/learning difficulty. You will find thatpeople are generally helpful and understanding.

3. Learn to laugh at yourself. Rather than being resentful that you can’tdo things, be positive about what you can do.

4. Find out the policy on dyslexia/learning difficulties in the company/institution that you work for/study within.

5. Seek out role models that have the same challenges as you, forexample Sir Winston Churchill, who was an educational disaster butended up with the Nobel Prize for Literature.

6. Find someone you can trust who can check your written work.7. Hard work and preparation are a great form of defence. Much of

what you do can often be done away from the gaze of others.8. Regard what you do as an asset and advantage. It’s why you are

unique!9. Become a master of your computer spelling and grammar checkers or

expert in a music-printing programme.10. Remember there will be a lot you can do that others cannot!



thirteen

Can computershelp? Matching the

inner with theouter ear

Adam Apostoli

Today, whether we like it or not, technology surrounds us wherever weare. In fact, the world as we know it would come to a complete standstillwithout the assistance of technology. So with all this technology in theworld, how is the dyslexic who chooses to make music affected or evenhelped by it? I am a student at the University of Edinburgh in the thirdyear of a four-year degree programme in music technology. I am alsodyslexic. In this brief chapter I will discuss how technology regularlyassists me in performing traditional tasks like composing and editingmusic, how I use technology creatively and the challenges this presents.

Creating scores with Sibelius

Ever since Sibelius first released its music notation software, Sibelius 7 in1993, the relationship between music and technology has grown. I firstcame across Sibelius while at school in 1999, when it was installed on twocomputers in the music technology suite. It was introduced to me at thetime as a sort of music word processor, to be used when I’d finished mycomposition, written it out and wanted to make it look more professional.Now don’t get me wrong, printed Sibelius scores look much better thanhandwritten manuscripts (well, mine in particular). However, I quickly



Music and Dyslexia

learnt that Sibelius was not just a ‘music processor’, but an extremelyuseful tool, soon to be an integral part of my creative process. As adyslexic, I found one of the most difficult and infuriating tasks I facedwas converting musical thoughts and ideas into a paper score that evenvaguely represented the music I heard in my head. Sibelius really helpedme overcome this by providing an in-built playback facility which playedback my score (albeit using crude MIDI1 instruments) while having acursor that moved along, highlighting the notes being played (not toodissimilar from karaoke really).

The ability to actually hear the score before other people play it and tohave the knowledge that what you’ve written is exactly what youintended is immeasurably useful. Sibelius obviates the need for endlessdrafts, because when something doesn’t sound right it can easily bealtered. I remember having to copy out a song for voice and pianoaccompaniment. I rewrote it several times because I’d made holes in thepaper with the number of corrections I’d had to make. Redrafting was aridiculously long and laborious process, but there was no other option; itwas either redrafting or my work was a mess, due in no small part toillegible handwriting. As I began using Sibelius, I found myself using itmore and more frequently, not only for copying out my compositions butalso for creating them. I would have never written any of the pieces I didfor symphony orchestra without the help of Sibelius; the ability to hearthe individual lines really helped to build up the composition into themusic I heard in my head.

On another note, I revise both my compositions and editionsconstantly. Using Sibelius helped me get over the frustration of producinguntidy scores. It also helped me by providing support during the creativeprocess and by allowing me to not become distracted by the state of myscore, instead letting me continue and create, doing the necessaryformatting automatically along the way. Without this support, mycompositional and editorial output would have been severely reduced, asI would have inevitably spent a great deal of time rewriting my work,becoming annoyed and stressed before eventually losing interestentirely.

1 MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is a digital dataformat that does not contain music but ‘event messages’ like pitch, duration,volume, tempo and vibrato, to name a few. MIDI is an agreed standardmaintained by the MIDI Manufacturers Association.

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Samples: the personal orchestra

As I stated earlier, Sibelius can play back the score I have realised usingcrude MIDI instruments, but due to sampling technology it is also able toproduce a more lifelike rendition. Sample technology, for those who don’tknow, is a method of synthesising using short recordings of sound fromreal instruments (samples) playing one note. The synthesiser thenprocesses these samples so that the original sample of a single note isconverted into a playable scale. Never mind the mechanics of samplingtechnology, does it really matter how lifelike the instruments sound?Well, in short, yes. When you create music and play it back using thedefault MIDI sounds on your computer, it doesn’t matter how detachedyou try to be from the sounds, you do actually make creative decisionsbased on what you hear. For example, some specific writing for stringinstruments may sound great in concert but when played using thesedefault MIDI sounds this writing may not have the same effect. This maylead you to question when you’re composing whether or not thistechnique actually works. Good samples are no replacement for a fullorchestra or, indeed, any live ensemble, but they do bridge theconsiderable gulf between live and MIDI performance, and are certainlyuseful when constructing music.

I find that, when composing, using a good sampler and hearing mywork build and grow with a degree of realism is extremely useful. I find itinforms my writing and better matches what I hear in my head,subsequently sparking off new ideas that develop further.

Sonic art and computer composition

Sonic art and composition without the need for musical notation could beseen as a dyslexic’s dream, as it cuts out the translation barrier and allowsthe musician to communicate directly with the audience, workingexclusively with the sound. I find that when I write music I don’t readilythink in notes; I actually think in sounds, colours and textures; soinevitably when I translate my ideas into musical notation I quite oftenlose some sense of what was originally intended. The two highly popularmusic-sequencing programs I use for working with sound are Apple’s

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Logic Pro and Digidesign’s Pro Tools. These are two of the many industrystandard audio-editing applications used by a vast number of peoplewho work with sound. I find that, when I create a composition, mycreative process is not structured, which lends itself to using sound ratherthan producing a score. The flexibility, fluidity and precision with which Ican work with sound leaves me not with a compromise but, most of thetime at least, with exactly the music I intended. This music never has tobe translated by musicians later on, as it’s recorded and played as musicin its own right.

I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with theircontribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lendthemselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.

Edgard Varese (1883–1965)

Another way I use music technology in creating music is by designingnew digital instruments. In designing these instruments, part of theprocess includes designing the interfaces2 used to control them. I useCycling74’s Max/MSP to do this. Using this program, any instrument ormusical device can be created and controlled with any control surfacethat produces a recognised output (for example a computer mouse, adigital writing tablet, even a Nintendo Wii controller). In using thisprogram, it really is possible to create instruments that are obedient to themusician’s thought, thus uniting the inner and outer ear. However, whencreating these instruments, the issue of a usable interface to control themis one that arises frequently. A difficult and fiddly interface makes thecreation and development of music extremely difficult. I have found thatthe best interfaces are the ones that are the most intuitive, and that beingdyslexic helps me in designing such an interface.

Technology as a hindrance?

So far I have sung the praises of technology and its use in music. I am alsosorry to say that, although technology may do wonderful things, there isvery seldom an occasion when it just works. Far too many hours havebeen spent tweaking software, finding out how to do something on the

2 An interface is usually the set of controls and means with which a user interactswith a program on a computer. It encapsulates the look and feel of a program.

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Can computers help? Matching the inner with the outer ear

computer that would take seconds by hand and reading through largeand complicated manuals before even beginning to work.

Something else I have found which renders technology a hindrance inmusic is the incompatibility between different software and hardwaresolutions for dyslexic musicians. The situation becomes so bad onoccasion that I have been known to walk round with two laptops andother hardware peripherals just to transcribe a single lute tablature. Ihave found that, if technology doesn’t integrate easily into your life andinstead you end up with many different components doing differentthings that could be integrated into one solution, technology not onlyhinders mobility but also singles out its users and draws unnecessaryattention to them. Furthermore, this technology is not only expensive topurchase in the first place but also requires expensive upgrades fairlyfrequently.

Technology and the future

For the dyslexic musician like me, technology in music not only makestraditional tasks bearable but also keeps the creative spark alive, allowingcreative expression without the need to worry about the way a score iswritten or how legible it is. The ability to play back what has been writtenis also a brilliant feature of technology, and, with the advent of morelifelike samples, this means that the gap between what is heard in theinner and outer ears is brought ever closer. If it weren’t for technology inmusic, and particularly Sibelius in my case, then my compositionalinterest would have died off a long time ago.

Technology in music, however, not only assists the dyslexic musicianwith traditional tasks but also opens up completely new fields, forexample computer music and composition. This new composition, whichrelies solely on sound and technology rather than the translation of ideasinto notation, provides dyslexic musicians with the ability to expressthemselves neither with limits nor with the feeling that they need tocompromise on a score. Technology has certainly helped me over theyears and continues to do so. The only aspect I would like to seeimproved is that it becomes more affordable and more integrated, so thatthe gap not only between the inner and outer ears but also between thedyslexic and non-dyslexic musician is bridged.

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Section III

Strategies andsuccesses



fourteen

Positiveconnections across

the generationsAnnemarie Sand and John Westcombe

Introduction

It is a great misfortune that relatively few colleagues now in the musiceducation profession are able to benefit from Margaret (Peggy) Hubicki’swisdom. For many years, she was a distinguished professor at the RoyalAcademy of Music (RAM). She devised a complete method for learningthe stave (Colour Staff, fully explained in Miles and Westcombe, 2001)and surprised many by the quality of her compositions, fortunatelyrecorded just before she died in early 2006.

Some of her wise teaching methods are hinted at by, and clearly had aneffect on, Annemarie Sand, a Danish student there who came to be bothreceiver and passer-on of the precepts below. Three voices are heard in thecourse of this chapter – denoted by the initials AS (Annemarie Sand), PH(Peggy Hubicki) and JW (John Westcombe) – which begins by discussingthe teaching strategies of Peggy Hubicki and then goes on to describe astudent’s entry to a music conservatoire and her rescuing a much youngercolleague (Peter Haddon) in danger of failing his undergraduate course.

Teaching: from theory to practice (JW)

In the first part of this chapter, John Westcombe sets out some of theprecepts that were the basis of much of Peggy Hubicki’s learning andteaching strategies.



Music and Dyslexia

They began with:

Aims� breaking facts into nameable sectors� separation of details and clear focus on any problem

Facts

PH felt very strongly that both teacher and learner have knowledge,information and experience. Flexibility and understanding are crucial sothat the teacher can work out how the student thinks in order to help findnew ways for the student to learn. They share common ground!

There are both differences and similarities between the student andtheir teacher. Dyslexics can become confused and lost in a fog for manyreasons and need much support from those around them, at home, atschool, friends. These supporters need unlimited patience and the abilityto feel what it is like to be in their pupils’ shoes, sharing the viewpoint ofunexpected difficulties and frustrations.

When the dyslexic student is trying to learn something they don’tunderstand, it is very helpful if the teacher can:�make the student feel that both are discovering it together, rather than

if the student sits alone feeling that here is something difficult whichthey, for some reason, will find hard� give clues and guidelines which help the student along the right path(without giving the solution itself). This can remove fears of beingbehind closed doors and the sense of feeling a fool.

Observations

Written music is a drawing. Its symbols represent:�pitch (high/low), therefore different notes� time (lengths of notes and rhythmic patterns) from which pulse andbeat must be divined and felt in the body. The eye follows pitchsymbols (up/down) and time symbols, which denote length(left/right). The eye sees detail on the page and recognises patterns.Instructions are sent to manipulate keys on the instrument and controlvocal sounds.

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Positive connections across the generations

The ear hears sounds of different pitches and volume, which can begentle or menacing, everyday or for special moments. The touch and feelof an instrument and its tactile aspect are often forgotten. The finger feelswhat the eye sees and the brain recognises.

Useful points

Question to learner: What do you see,hear, feel?

By careful teacher-guidance and a many-angled approach, the studentbecomes aware of points of learning and grasping matter, to be locked intheir brain at the same time.

Finding the right words in response may be difficult, not least throughdifferent meanings, spellings and relationships (and, for musicians,directions in different languages). Here it is important to try to think howthe students think and would identify with the meaning, then find wordswhich they understand and which make sense in their world right now.In this way, you establish common vocabulary and can then go on toencourage hand signs and body movement (make a great stave on thefloor and leap the intervals or devise a musical hopscotch).

Separately, the learner may have difficulty in explaining a problem.Here again, the teacher needs to choose words carefully, from thestudent’s vocabulary, that can relate to the problem in an imaginativeway. It ought then to be easier to respond to the precise nature of theproblem when the pupil says: ‘I’m stuck!’ The wise teacher can find outwhether the difficulty is manipulative. You are on familiar territory andcan then travel together through the music, discovering what it canconsist of and learn as much as the student can manage in that lesson.Next time, continue the process, adding to the layers. Explaining this in anon-musical context might help:

Example

A pupil is late for a singing lesson and could not follow directions fromthe station to the teacher’s house because the words on the directionsigns meant little to him. He made telephone contact and the teacherchanged tack to the visual surroundings: ‘Can you see the church?’ (Asopposed to, ‘Take the third left.’)

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The outcome of this little cameo is that, as opposed to feeling a failure,the pupil gains confidence, albeit over a small matter, and the teacherremembers to try more than one method of solving difficulties.

Many of these basics apply in later stages too.

Learning: from student to professionalsinger (AS)

Annemarie Sand, new to this country and to higher education, wasfortunate to encounter Peggy soon after her arrival from Denmark. Sherelates the opening part of the story.

Peggy Hubicki helped me all my life as a musician, and as a person.Before I went to RAM, Peggy worked with me for a year so that I

would be able to pass the various music tests (in English) I had to pass tobe eligible for the entrance examination. The education system inDenmark was quite well advanced in its attention to dyslexia, and there Iwas known in the system as dyslexic. Once here, I told no one. Muchlater, I did have a conversation about that. I had wanted to try to benormal and learn on a normal person’s terms, not on ‘handicapped’terms. I needed to feel free from people knowing, and by not telling Icould find my own way of learning, and ultimately prove to myself, bysucceeding, that I was as good as a non-dyslexic.

Peggy helped me contact a very experienced person who knew thesinging teachers at the conservatoires at that time, and I took thisperson’s advice, and am to this day still studying with that same teacher.Peggy also gave me moral support, total trust in my ability and, inhelping me to achieve my goal in becoming an opera singer for real,helped me recognise what is needed for a singer to understandfundamental harmonic combinations and patterns, making the writtenmusic so much more accessible. Together we dissected problems, workedout what was wrong and found solutions, a process on which I continuedto build for many years.

After Carsten, my son, was born, I valued these regular meetingshighly. Peggy and I had amazing talks about what the bare essence is ofwhat makes a musician. We decided to involve Carsten from early on(indeed pre-birth!) as a basic starting point – almost a colleague. Wemerged the kind of precepts outlined above with both his and my currentthinking, developing reactions, competences and improvisation. I went to

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work right away, implementing the agreed basic structure, and with myown improvisation. Later, Carsten clearly also was able to put thissystematic help into his schoolwork.

Over time this hands-on experience made a very big difference to howI looked at music and also to how I viewed the learning process. It mademe:� see and understand everything from a different angle� isolate the basics of what’s needed�find out how to implant them in another person�how that young person learns�how the gradual building of every day’s little contributions can bring

surprising outcomes.

My own experiences as a professional singer and knowledge of how tolearn were broadened; new ideas and ways appeared through interactionwith other colleagues. Looking at problems, small and large, from two orthree different angles has always been essential. Opera singers (andconcerto players) cannot have their music with them on stage. The formermight carry around with them a very brief summary of, for example,‘mood on stage, chorus action, love song at window, “Then it’s me.”’

Introducing Peter Haddon (JW)

John Westcombe explains how, and unexpectedly, Annemarie wasapproached to take on the formidable task of helping a student who hadbeen failing. The precepts outlined above were fundamental to her plans.

Peter Haddon was identified as dyslexic when 13, while a seniorchorister at Westminster Abbey, and won a choral scholarship to astrongly musical public school, where he also played bassoon and was akeen geographer and sportsman. He did not take music GCSE or A level,but he secured a coveted place at a music conservatoire with nine GCSEsand two A levels, and had good reason to assume that they felt that hecould cope with the demands of the course.

All seemed to go reasonably well there, save that there was theoccasional need to rewrite an essay. Serious problems arose when thecollege required a whole-year retake mid-course, entailing a recital,which he seriously failed through insufficient preparation. It was not thathe didn’t feel that he had to prepare; at that time, he had a seriousproblem with time management.

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Music and Dyslexia

His confidence had been badly damaged by the failure. So, how wereseveral new pieces of music in four or five different languages to beimmaculately planned and prepared for the retake recital performancewithout error or sheet music? His parents despaired. Mrs Haddon, adivisional adviser for the British Dyslexia Association (BDA), soughthigh and low for a teacher, and by chance came upon a journal publishedby the BDA (Dyslexia Contact, vol. 23, no. 1, 2004) which had an articleabout Annemarie. The latter took on the challenge and takes the story onto its happy conclusion.

Successful teaching brings itsown rewards (AS)

Peter Haddon is a very handsome, tall young man, with a beautifulbass-baritone voice, I later was to discover. He comes across as a veryopen person with great trust and kindness. I liked him, from our firstprofessional contact.

He had come to me in the hope that I could help him pass anexamination to be re-accepted for the last year of a four-year course at amusic conservatoire.

First, we talked for two to three hours so I could get to know him as aperson and also find out what problems his dyslexia was causing him.The next thing I did was to devise an ad-hoc programme for what he hadto do between then and the examination. This comprised working on hismusic-learning and memory problems. We also concentrated onconveying dramatic meaning in a piece while ensuring that character waskept at the centre of his musical and dramatic interpretations.

We decided when to meet next, and I engaged Nick Bosworth, who is awonderful and very experienced accompanist. He had very kindlyagreed to play on the day of the recital examination also (an importantfactor in sustaining confidence for the rigours of the performance dayand a highly recommended strategy for all to consider).

I think we met three times after this first meeting, and we would workfor about two hours on the programme, which consisted of seven songsand arias in different languages. Every time we met, I would agree whathis homework would be, between now and next time, and he would goaway with great enthusiasm, doing exactly what we had agreed.

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I was pleased that he worked so hard and impressed with hisdiscipline and determination to succeed. I was also very happy abouthaving managed to bring out facets of his technique and presentationthat had obviously lain dormant.

At the end of our time together he told me that he had been amazed athow successful the process had been and was very complimentary. I feltquite sure that he could do it from the very beginning, but as a teacheryou never really know until you have gone through the process.

Conclusion (JW)

Much as in the first pages of this chapter, Peggy Hubicki’s firm teachingprinciples were identified; so, at this later stage, Annemarie’s strategiesare worth attention. She made him think about:�preserving a firm rhythmic base� counting out loud�noticing features like descending scales�having the phrase in his ear�whether anything vital was going on on stage while he was waiting for

his next entry� learning ways to remain engaged with a piece even when he wasresting between scenes� analysing a piece from every angle (the dramatic, visual, musical,voice-control)� and what, for example, it was that he had to do, apart from just singingthe notes, to make this song German and this one French.

With some excellent mentoring and a determination to prepare well inall the demanding sections, this young musician approached the finalrecital of 45 minutes knowing that something special was required. Onceagain, Annemarie had been insightful and inspirational.

Soon afterwards, Peter Haddon had a recital report, which states:

What a glorious sound! alongside a Distinction, and marks for thelanguage elements not far off. He now has a 2.1 Honours Degree,has quickly moved into the professional world instead of theimpecunious student loan contingent which seemed almostinevitable at one stage. He has signed a contract with a much-sought-after small specialist choral ensemble.

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Some of the fundamentals that Annemarie was imparting to herstudent, and still finding supportive in her professional life, wereundoubtedly those which she herself had taken in at least a generationbefore. They are the basic precepts outlined in the opening of this chapterand echo the work she had done years before in promoting her son’smusical development. Two typical traits of dyslexia – poor timemanagement and poor organisation – had threatened Peter Haddon’sfuture: the passing on of methods to improve these skills, as well as thesupport of his mother, was critical to this young musician’s success.

Reference


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fifteen

Similarities anddifferences in the

dyslexic voicePaula Bishop-Liebler

A love of music unites all musicians, but they are also as diverse as theinstruments they play and the type of music they enjoy. Dyslexicmusicians, as a group, are no different: they often share similar strengthsand difficulties, but also exhibit unique profiles which create diversitywithin their learning and support needs.

How dyslexia seems to affect individual musicians depends upon theinteraction between a number of factors, including the person’s cognitiveprofile and the severity of their dyslexia or dyspraxia, alongside practicalconsiderations such as the type of music being studied, be it classical,musical theatre, pop or jazz, the demands of their course or career, forexample whether or not they need to read music fluently, and the lengthand type of musical education they have received.

Commonly reported difficulties for dyslexic musicians include readingmusical notation, especially sight-reading, learning new music quickly,rhythmic accuracy – especially from notation – memorising music,scanning music or following a conductor and then finding the right placein the score, sustained concentration and languages for singers.

When working with dyslexic musicians in a variety of conservatoiresettings and in a variety of contexts (such as research, assessment andteaching), patterns of variety and cohesion are quickly seen. It isimportant to define the spectrum of similarity and diversity so that wecan begin to understand more fully how dyslexia affects musical learningand how best to support these students. To illustrate this I will discuss theprofiles of three dyslexic singers. I have chosen to focus upon singers tohighlight the fact that within just one ‘instrument’, the voice, there is agreat deal of variety as well as cohesion.



Music and Dyslexia

Singers are a diverse group, especially at the conservatoire level. Onereason for this is that the voice matures later in life, which means thatmany singers come to musical training later than their instrumentalcounterparts and some may have had little or no prior musical training.This affects the learning profile of the student. For example, sight-singingmay be difficult due to a lack of experience as well as possible processingdifficulties associated with dyslexia. Singers also have the addeddifficulty of words to accompany the music. They will probably need tosing in a variety of languages which they may not have previouslystudied and may find challenging, owing to their dyslexia. These generaland specific points need to be taken into consideration when workingwith a dyslexic singer, in order to develop appropriate strategies for them.

Fiona: Undergraduate classical singer

Fiona was diagnosed with mild dyslexia and dyspraxia on enteringmusic college.

Musical background

She has been singing since childhood and has always had an interest inmusic. She plays the piano, although she finds it challenging. Shefollowed a traditional music education at school before entering musiccollege.

Fiona reported that she was having difficulty with the followingaspects of her musical learning when she began her course:� slow processing of both aural and written music� co-ordination for conducting� aural, especially dictation, and singing and clapping at the same time� rhythm both aurally and from the score� sight-singing

Music observations

Her primary concern was her rhythmical accuracy. She found it difficultto maintain a steady pulse accurately and did not ‘feel’ the strong and

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Similarities and differences in the dyslexic voice

weak beats easily. She had some difficulty following musical scoresaccurately as she did not easily connect what she saw with what sheheard, and sequencing the information was difficult.

Discussion

Fiona had a comprehensive musical education and it is therefore clearthat her difficulties were not due to any lack of tuition but were likely tobe related to her dyslexia and dyspraxia. One of the cognitive indicatorsof dyspraxia is difficulty sequencing and ordering patterns; this seems tohave had a direct affect upon Fiona’s musical learning, as patternrecognition, both aurally and visually, is an important aspect of musicalprocessing. She also has poor short-term auditory memory, which makesit difficult for her to remember aurally presented materials.

When she learnt to connect her breathing with the rhythm, her voicequality clearly improved. She needed concrete strategies in order toprocess all the information on the score. Fiona had to process consciouslya lot of the information which many singers process automatically, whichslowed her processing down. With systematic learning strategies Fionasuccessfully completed her aural and conducting examinations and isnow able to perceive rhythms more accurately.

Katie: Undergraduate jazz singer

Katie was in her mid-20s when she began her undergraduate course. Shewas diagnosed with dyslexia when she was at primary school and hadreceived dyslexia tuition and extra time in examinations throughout hereducation. Owing to having been diagnosed early and having receivedappropriate support, Katie felt confident with her academic learningstrategies. However, it was not until she went to music college anddiscussed her musical learning that she realised that some aspects of hermusical learning which she found difficult might be connected with herdyslexia.

Musical background

Katie had studied music at GCSE and A level, although she found theacademic elements challenging. She therefore decided to follow a morepractical course and went on to successfully complete a music diploma

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with distinction. Katie had played the saxophone from an early age andbegan the flute while at secondary school. When she was 18, she decidedto focus upon jazz singing.

She reported that she was having difficulty with the following aspectsof musical learning at the beginning of her music college degree:�musical harmony�understanding and applying musical harmony to singing

Music observations

As Katie had opted for more practical music courses wherever possible,she had not fully developed her music-analysis and readingskills/strategies. Her lack of knowledge regarding harmonic languagehad not been a concern until entering music college, as she learnt musicaurally. However, she now wanted to understand harmonic relationshipsin jazz in order to further her musical skills.

Discussion

Although she didn’t need to read music fluently as she could learn musicaurally, she did not feel confident that she knew about how musicworked, and this affected her confidence in musical situations especiallyas she wanted to converse with other jazz musicians. Unlike classicalsingers, Katie did not have to deal with any difficulties she might havehad with foreign languages as all her music was in English. As Katie hada history of difficulties with theory and notation, it was likely that thesedifficulties were at least partly due to her dyslexia as well as her lack ofexperience.

Lucy: Undergraduate classical singer

Lucy was diagnosed with dyslexia in her second year of anundergraduate degree. She came forward for assessment because she washaving difficulties with French phonetics. Lucy had found strategieswhile at school to compensate for her difficulties with literacy; so it wasonly when she began to learn French phonetics, which highlighted manyof the areas that Lucy found difficult, that she realised that she wasfinding it more difficult than her peers, which she couldn’t explain.

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Musical background

Lucy had followed a traditional music education at school, studyingmusic at GCSE and A level. She studied the piano from the age of 10 to 16and achieved Grade 6. She reported that she learnt most of the gradedexamination repertoire by ear; however, as the music became harder, thismethod became increasingly more difficult. Lucy had always enjoyedsinging and when she left school she spent two years studying singingbefore beginning her undergraduate degree at music college.

Lucy reported that she was having difficulty with the following aspectsof her musical learning:� learning music quickly� sight-singing� rhythmical accuracy from the score� learning foreign-language texts for songs�phonetics

Music observations

As with many adults with dyslexia, Lucy had difficulty with accuracyand speed of processing in aspects of her learning; she could do each taskseparately, but it took her longer to process than her non-dyslexic peers.In her musical learning this was particularly evident as reading vocalmusic requires high levels of multi-tasking. Developing strategies toensure that music was accurately learnt as quickly as possibleconsequently became the main priority for her dyslexia support.

Discussion

Through appropriate and timely support, Lucy developed manystrategies to assist with her musical learning. In her dyslexia supportsessions she developed a system for learning new music more quicklyand thoroughly so she could make the most of each singing lesson orcoaching as she was now properly prepared.

As part of these strategies for learning new music Lucy developed herlanguage learning skills. These particularly focused on connecting thevisual, motor and auditory aspects of language learning. When she beganlessons, Lucy had difficulty distinguishing sounds accurately and so it

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was important to develop strategies to ensure that she could checkwhether or not each sound was correct. This was done in a number ofstages, including systematically and consciously breaking down eachword and connecting the sounds with their phonetic symbols. Althoughit took Lucy some time to learn the phonetic symbols initially, there areonly a limited number of options. This meant that, once she had learntthem, she could be sure that she was pronouncing the words correctly.Lucy also used her strong kinaesthetic sense to learn the mouth shapes foreach of the phonetic symbols, making the process much quicker. Havingused these and other strategies, she was able to connect the phoneticsounds with the visual representation of the word and was able to readforeign languages more accurately without needing to check every sound.

Lucy also used technology to increase her independence in learningmusic. When given a difficult piece to learn, she would scan it intoSibelius, a computer package for writing music. Using this, she couldhear and see the music simultaneously and manipulate the tempo. Shefound it particularly useful for checking her rhythmical accuracy.

These are just some of the strategies which Lucy developed in order tolearn music quickly and accurately. One of the particular benefits of thiswas that Lucy became more independent and confident in her learning;she no longer had to rely upon friends and teachers to ensure that shehad learnt her music correctly.

Conclusions

All three case studies demonstrate some of the diversity of learningprofiles and priorities for support.�The students’ musical backgrounds created diversity (e.g. we would

expect Katie, who had little experience in theoretical music, to find hercourse challenging due to learning new skills, but lack of prior musicaltraining could not explain Fiona’s difficulties).�The nature and severity of the student’s learning difficulty, be itdyslexia, dyspraxia or a combination of both, will in itself createparticular learning challenges and priorities for support (e.g. in Fiona’scase rhythm, in Lucy’s languages and learning music more quicklyand for Katie it was harmony).� Studying music at a higher education level can in itself create newchallenges for dyslexic musicians. The pressures of conservatoire

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study, the large amount needing to be learnt, the accuracy ofperformance and, for classical singers, the need to learn music in manydifferent languages can put pressure on the student’s existingstrategies. This can mean that even those who have developedeffective strategies in the past often need to develop further strategiesto maintain progress.� Individual course requirements differ widely and consequently createdifferent priorities for support. The realities of the career such as theamount of music needed to be learnt in a week will affect the strategiesneeded. All three students had difficulties with some aspect of readingmusical notation and retaining aural information. However, in theirdifferent careers Lucy and Fiona were more likely to need fluent musicreading skills than Katie, although she would benefit from theconfidence which more fluent music reading and analytical skillswould give her.

When teaching dyslexic musicians, as with all teaching, working withthe student’s strengths is imperative for success. In order to do this, I findit useful to spend time building up a detailed picture of the student’slearning history, mapping the areas that the student currently finds easyand difficult, and identifying their preferred learning styles. This isfollowed by prioritising areas for initial development. As these studentsare usually already highly experienced musicians, the areas of difficultyare often subtle and complex. I therefore find that, with these students,the most effective dyslexia teaching is when it is approached as apartnership between the dyslexia tutor and student, where the dyslexiatutor provides the framework for discussion, as they can explain whatdyslexia and dyspraxia are and how they often seem to affect musicallearning, and the student can identify the specific ways they feel theirdyslexia affects their learning and their performance with their particularinstrument. By working explicitly as a partnership, rather than as teacherand student, the student can become an expert in their learning.

Having identified areas of difficulty and preferred learning styles, eachtask, such as rhythmical accuracy, needs to be broken down into itscomponent parts so that strategies can be developed for each aspectusing a multisensory framework. By explicitly identifying each process,the student can work on small targets and revise each step so that theygrow in confidence and skill. This process of breaking down each taskinto manageable and explicit steps enables the student to take control oftheir learning and apply a systematic method to other tasks. This processis central to teaching students how to learn rather than what to learn.

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sixteen

Thirty-seven oboistsCarolyn King

Introduction

In this chapter, I describe my experiences as an oboe teacher, and how Iused the Bangor Dyslexia Test (BDT; Miles, 1997) as a screening test fordyslexia. Some of my pupils were dyslexic; some not. Brief sketches aregiven of a few individual pupils and attention is drawn to differencesbetween those who are and those who are not dyslexic.

Dyslexia is thought to occur in up to 10% of the population, witharound 4% being severely affected (Crisfield, 1996; Ellis, 1993, p. 94). Thismeans that the instrumental teacher teaching, say, 50 to 100 pupils in aweek might have five pupils with at least some degree of dyslexia. WhenI started teaching the oboe some 25 years ago, dyslexia was not acondition which was familiar to most music teachers, and was onlyacknowledged by class teachers principally concerned with teachingliteracy. Music was definitely not a priority and the relevance of dyslexiain music reading and performing was probably not fully realised.

However, in the last 10 years dyslexia has become more openlyacknowledged, to the extent that most schools and their musicdepartments are now required to have a list to which teachers can refer ofpupils with special needs. Such a list alerted me to the (previouslyunrecognised) fact that one of my pupils, who I had taught for some threeyears, was registered as dyslexic. This pupil (B6), who will be discussedin more detail later, had some problems with sight-reading and scales,which I realised could be due to her dyslexia, and I therefore decided toinvestigate how many others of my pupils were similarly affected. This



Thirty-seven oboists

investigation involved the screening of 37 oboe pupils for dyslexia usingthe BDT.

Dyslexia and oboe playing

Figure 16.1. The oboe. (Photograph of Howarth XL oboe by kind permission of T.W. Howarth and Co. Ltd, London.)

As has been excellently described by Sheila Oglethorpe (1996), dyslexicindividuals can experience problems in many aspects of performing onmost musical instruments. Reading the music – deciphering thesignificance of open or closed notes with tails going up or down,arranged on a mystifying set of five lines and spaces – is a majordifficulty. This difficulty is compounded when two staves have to be readsimultaneously, as when playing the piano. A hazy knowledge ofleft/right, up/down, high/low can cause all sorts of problems withlearning the fingerings of most instruments. Co-ordination of the twohands, which on the piano and various other instruments may have tomove in opposite directions, is likely to be made more difficult for pupilswith a degree of dyslexia.

Playing the oboe is possibly one of the easier options for the dyslexicpupil. The oboe player only has to read one line of music. In addition, theinstrument is positioned centrally, down the body’s midline; the basicposition of the hands does not move and the fingering system over-blowsto the octave (rather than the twelfth, as on the clarinet), which meansthat a proportion of the notes have more or less the same fingering indifferent octaves.

Nevertheless, learning even the initial placement of the hands on theoboe can be troublesome for the dyslexic pupil, and although some of thefingerings will be familiar to pupils who have previously learnt therecorder, there are several which are crucially different and notparticularly logical. In particular, the fingering for F natural involvesadding a finger (the third finger of the right hand, which more usuallycovers the D hole) to the fingering for E (the normal sequence would bethat adding a finger makes the note go lower). F natural is also one of the

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few notes on the oboe for which there is an alternative fingering when itis preceded by certain notes such as D, E flat, C# or by low notes wherethe third finger (right hand) is already on the D hole.

The above examples demonstrate that, although the fingering is fairlylogical, it is never going to be completely straightforward to play a scaleon the oboe until the fingerings for the notes have been kinaestheticallyprogrammed into the brain and fingers. This is especially the case for thedyslexic pupil, who may well have only a hazy idea of what the notesshould be and who will not necessarily be helped by learning scales orpieces by looking at the music.

Testing for dyslexia

Having discovered that one of my pupils was officially dyslexic, it wasnecessary to determine how to screen all the others for dyslexia. Aninvestigation of the tests available (and their feasibility for use during anoboe lesson) led me to the BDT.

This test, which was devised as a result of the pioneering observationsof dyslexic subjects by Tim Miles during the 1970s, was first published in1982. It provides a short (10- to 15-minute) screening test for dyslexia,which seemed ideal for use with oboe pupils within their individuallessons.

Miles’ starting point in developing the BDT was that dyslexia equateswith a particular ‘pattern of difficulties’. His book Dyslexia: The Pattern ofDifficulties (Miles, 1993) describes the development of the BDT frominformal observations to formal screening test, with an explanation of thetheoretical basis of the tests within the BDT.

In his book, Tim Miles came to the conclusion that the difficultieswhich dyslexic subjects experience with these questions can mostly beattributed to a difficulty with verbal labelling, which can also bedescribed as a phonological weakness.

In other words, the BDT seems to be tapping into the fundamentaldifficulties which dyslexic subjects have; and although non-dyslexicsubjects do have some problems with the test, it has been shown by Milesthat there are significantly more ‘dyslexia-positive’ results in the dyslexicas opposed to the control individuals. It therefore seemed to me to be anappropriate screening test to conduct for the purposes of determining thedegree of dyslexia which might be present within my group of 37 oboepupils.

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The tests in the BDT are summarised as:

(1) questions about left and right(2) repetition of polysyllabic words(3) subtraction(4) recitation of mathematical tables(5) and (6) saying the months of the year forwards and backwards(7) and (8) repetition of an increasing series of numbers forwards and of

a smaller series of numbers backwards(9) questions about past or continuing confusion between the letters ‘b’

and ‘d’(10) questions about familial incidence of dyslexia or dyslexia-like

tendencies.

Careful note was made of all hesitations when answering, or use ofspecial strategies such as counting on fingers or turning round (whenanswering the left/right questions). The final scoring consisted of:dyslexia-positive responses (+), dyslexia-negative (–) or somewhere inbetween (zero). Two zero responses counted as one + (plus).

Having used the scoring method as detailed in the BDT booklet, theBDT index (maximum total possible 10) was found to range from zero to7 pluses. Table 16.1 below shows the detailed BDT scores for all pupils,with answers to question 10 (familial incidence) in column 4.

Seven pupils had high BDT scores in the range of 5 to 7. When thesescores are compared with those in Miles’ list of known dyslexic cases(Miles, 1993, pp. 38–52), it can be seen that they clearly fall within therange of the dyslexia-positive group, with which Miles was dealing (all ofwhom were initially referred to him because of their reading and/orspelling difficulties). The high-scoring group of seven being studied hereincluded four of my pupils who were known to be registered as dyslexic(B6, A7, F1, F2), one pupil who had not been diagnosed but showedmany dyslexic traits (H1) and two pupils (A1 and D3) whose high scorecame as a complete surprise, as they did not at the time seem to have anyserious musical problems and I was not aware of any reported difficultieswith reading or spelling.

Within this group, four parents (B6, F1, D3, H1) reported diagnoseddyslexia in the family, two were not sure (A7 and F2, assigned a zero) andA1 was also doubtful (in retrospect should have been assigned a zerorather than a plus).

There were 18 pupils with low BDT scores of between 0 and 2. In thisgroup, only two parents reported any evidence of dyslexia in the family.

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Table 16.1. Detailed BDT scores for all pupils

Pupil ID BDT score BDT 1–10 scores Familial incidence

LOWF5 0.0 – – – – – – – – – – No dyslexiaD4 0.0 – – – – – – – – – – No dyslexiaA8 0.0 – – – – – – – – – – No dyslexiaA3 0.5 0 – – – – – – – – – No dyslexiaF4 0.5 – – – 0 – – – – – – No dyslexiaA6 0.5 0 – – – – – – – – – No dyslexiaD1 0.5 – – 0 – – – – – – – No dyslexiaB14 1.0 0 – – 0 – – – – – – No dyslexiaB12 1.0 – – – – – – + – – – No dyslexiaG5 1.0 0 – – – – – – – 0 – No dyslexiaE1 1.5 – – – – – 0 – – + – No dyslexiaB3 1.5 0 – – – – – + – – – No dyslexiaB5 1.5 – – 0 – – – – + – – No dyslexiaC1 1.5 0 – – – – – – + – – No dyslexiaB10 1.5 – – – – – 0 + – – – No dyslexiaB8 2.0 – – – – – – – + – + 1st cousin dyslexicA4 2.0 0 – – – – 0 – – – + Paternal uncle dyslexic, mother not sure

l/rD2 2.0 + – – – – – + – – – No dyslexia

MEDIUMA2 2.5 – – 0 + – – – – – + Paternal aunt very poor speller, pupil

A2 left-handedB9 2.5 0 – – 0 – 0 – – – + Maternal 1st cousin dyslexicB7 2.5 0 – – – – – + + – – No dyslexiaF3 2.5 – – – – – 0 + + – – No dyslexiaB2 3.0 + – – 0 – – – + 0 – No dyslexiaB13 3.0 0 – – – – 0 + – – + Mother very poor speller, maternal

uncle very slow to learn to readB11 3.0 0 – – 0 – – + + – – No dyslexiaB1 3.5 + – – 0 – – – + – + Maternal aunt, maternal cousin, great

aunt, paternal cousin dyslexicB4 3.5 + + – – – 0 + – – – No dyslexiaE2 3.5 0 0 – – – – + + 0 – No dyslexiaG2 4.5 + 0 0 0 – – + + – nk No replyG6 4.5 + 0 – + – – – – + + Father probably dyslexic, 2 siblings

probably mildly, pupil G6 dyspraxic

HIGHB6 5.0 + 0 0 0 – 0 – + – + Paternal uncle, paternal 1st cousin

dyslexicA1 5.5 + 0 0 0 0 – + + – + Sister had spelling difficulties till 14,

father similarA7 5.5 + – – 0 – 0 + + + 0 Mother has l/r problems, grandfather

slow to readF1 5.5 0 – – + – – + + + + Mother dyslexic, grandfather probablyD3 5.5 + – – 0 – 0 + + 0 + Father dyslexicH1 6.5 + – + + + – – + 0 + Paternal relatives with problems, father

slow reader, cousins dyslexicF2 7.0 + – + + – 0 + + + 0 Neither parent good speller, no

diagnosed problems

Note: l/r = left/right.

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A group of 12 pupils had intermediate BDT scores from 2.5 to 4.5;within this group, five parents reported dyslexia or dyslexia-like traitswithin the family, although none of the pupils had any reported problemswith literacy.

The musical abilities and problems of some of these pupils will beconsidered in more detail in the next section.

A selection of case studies

In this section I shall summarise the main problems which some of these37 pupils had with the two aspects of oboe playing (scales andsight-reading) which seem to me to be most affected by the presence of adegree of dyslexia. Comments about both the sight-reading skills andscale-playing ability are mainly the result of personal observation of thesepupils at the time of this study (2002) and in the ensuing years (to 2006).No formal study of scale playing was done, and, although more formalresearch into the rhythmic aspects of sight-reading did show astatistically significant positive correlation between rhythmic errors andan increasing BDT score (King, 2003, 2006), this did not always reflectoverall sight-reading ability.

Good sight-reading seems to be the result of numerous factors,including the ability to look ahead (an eye–note span of 5–7 notes aheadis common in good sight-readers; Sloboda, 1985, Chapter Three), thefamiliarity of the musical idiom, memory of musical patterns and contourand establishment of a mental musical dictionary, auditory feedback andmemory of what has just been played, recognition of phrasing andrhythmic structure and the ability to do multi-tasking (Lehmann andMcArthur, 2002; Harris and Crozier, 2000).

The ability to play scales accurately and fluently also depends on manycomponent skills, including a knowledge of key signatures, a technicalfacility with the fingers, especially with the very high notes, which areless frequently used, the ability to hear internally the pitch of the nextnote and to form the most appropriate embouchure and the ability tohear the pitch and access the fingering for the notes, especially whencoming down the scale. Many of these aspects (theoretical knowledge,memory and sequencing, finger co-ordination) are likely to beproblematic for the dyslexic pupil.

Table 16.2 below summarises all pupils’ BDT scores, their ages andyears of learning the oboe at the time of testing, with some comments

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Table 16.2. BDT scores and comments about pupils’ scale-playing andsight-reading abilities

Age when Years Comments about scalesPupil ID BDT score tested learning and sight-reading

LOWF5 0.0 12.3 2.3D4 0.0 14.6 2.3 Scales and s/r very badA8 0.0 11.8 1.8A3 0.5 9.5 2.0 Scales and s/r very badF4 0.5 13.4 3.3A6 0.5 17.0 6.0D1 0.5 14.9 5.3B14 1.0 13.6 2.3B12 1.0 13.9 5.3G5 1.0 16.4 7.3E1 1.5 12.0 2.3B3 1.5 14.3 2.3B5 1.5 12.2 2.0 Scales and s/r badC1 1.5 9.3 1.0 Scales weak, s/r goodB10 1.5 9.3 0.8B8 2.0 15.1 4.3A4 2.0 8.8 1.0D2 2.0 14.9 3.3

MEDIUMA2 2.5 16.4 4.6 Scales and s/r very badB9 2.5 12.7 2.3 Scales and s/r very badB7 2.5 14.7 3.3F3 2.5 11.7 2.0B2 3.0 15.7 6.0B13 3.0 13.2 1.8 Scales good, s/r weakB11 3.0 15.5 6.0B1 3.5 14.7 4.0 Scales very bad, s/r weakB4 3.5 12.0 3.3 Scales and s/r very badE2 3.5 10.5 1.0G2 4.5 17.0 3.3 Scales and s/r very badG6 4.5 17.0 5.0 Scales and s/r weak

HIGHB6 5.0 15.7 6.0 Scales very bad, s/r goodA1 5.5 14.7 2.3 Scales weak, s/r fairA7 5.5 16.3 3.7 Scales and s/r very badD3 5.5 13.8 2.3 Scales weak, s/r goodF1 5.5 14.1 5.3 Scales and s/r very badH1 6.5 11.6 2.6 Scales very bad, s/r weakF2 7.0 13.1 4.3 Scales very bad, s/r good

Note: s/r = sight-reading.

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about scale and sight-reading ability. (Note: I have only specified scaleplaying as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ when I have found the pupil to have a realproblem with scales, as distinct from problems resulting simply from alack of practice.)

High BDT group (5--7)

This group of pupils with ages ranging from 11.6 to 16.3 years had beenplaying the oboe for between two and six years. There was one featurecommon to the playing of all of these pupils (except D3 and A1), whichwas their inability to play scales at their appropriate level, especiallycoming down. Perusal of their BDT results (see Table 16.1 above) showsdyslexia-positive (+) scores in Q8 (numbers reversed) in each case. Itwas noticeable that, even for pupils who could go up a scale successfully,turning round at the top and coming down was much more problematic,maybe because of the difficulties of remembering the sounds and accessingthe names of the notes in reverse which had just been played goingup. H1 was very bad at scales (see Table 16.2 above), and had noticeabledifficulties in the recitation of mathematical tables section (questionfour) of the BDT as well as the number sequences (question eight).

The two pupils (D3 and A1) who had unexpectedly high BDT scoresdid not at the time seem to have serious problems with scales (both wereat about the Grade 3 level). Subsequently, D3 has been referred for extraliteracy help at school, and as he gets more advanced on the oboe he hasfound the scales very difficult. Pupil A1 has meanwhile given up, havinggot stuck at the Grade 5 level scales.

The sight-reading ability of this group of pupils was more varied. Verygood sight-reading was a characteristic of pupils B6 and F2. Both of thesepupils had been playing for several years, came from musicallysupportive families and had joined in lots of musical activities from anearly age. B6 had also been a dancer for several years, which may havehelped to embed good musical pitch and timing into her playing, astaught by Dalcroze (Pegg, 1994), and pupil F2 played the recorder froman early age. Both of these pupils had therefore had plenty ofopportunities to absorb musical patterns and conventions and had beenable to play alongside other competent players. Pupil F2’s commentsabout her sight-reading ability were interesting. She said that she readmusic by ‘letting her fingers do it’ but would not necessarily know whichnotes she was playing.

By contrast, pupils F1 and A7 were both very poor sight-readers. A7particularly had had very little musical support at school (where she was

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told she was stupid by her music teacher) or at home. She had neverplayed in a group with other better sight-readers and had problems notjust with rhythm but with identifying the notes. The stave appearedsometimes to have more than five lines – this was improved by the use ofa green filter.

Pupils A1 and D3 seemed to be quite adequate sight-readers, and D3continues to be a useful player in numerous groups. He also has a verysupportive musical family.

H1, the youngest pupil of this group, had severe sequencing problems(very weak at maths) but had a very good ear and instinctive musicalsense and was good at sight-reading music in an idiom with which hewas familiar (from a choir-school background), but he was much lesssuccessful at most other kinds of music.

Medium BDT group (2.5--4.5)

This group of 12 ‘intermediate scorers’ is interesting in a musical sense inthat they frequently had problems with scales, which paralleled adifficulty with tables, or with musical memory, which was reflected in thedigits forwards and reversed items of the BDT. Those who were bad atscales were generally not good sight-readers. None of these pupils wasdiagnosed as dyslexic from the literacy point of view; so some of theproblems which were observed might be said to represent a musicalvariant of dyslexia, or ‘formes frustes’ (Critchley and Critchley, 1978), inwhich some but not all symptoms are apparent. It is interesting to notethat of the seven pupils which I have noted as being poor at scalesand/or sight-reading (A2, B9, B13, B1, B4, G2, G6), five had evidence ofdyslexia in the family. Only B4 said there was no family history ofdyslexia, and no answer was received from the parents of G2.

Unlike the high-scoring group, there were no consistent problems withquestions seven and eight in the BDT. Pupil A2, for example, did well inthese two tests but had problems with mathematical tables (in spite ofbeing 16 years old) in which the answers require a memory of the totalplus knowledge of where they are up to in the sequence (‘six eights are48’ etc.). This pupil was very bad at scales and had been tested fordyslexia when he was 4 years old and shown to have some co-ordinationand sequencing problems. However, he never had any literacy problems.This pupil was a very hesitant sight-reader even though he reached ahigh standard of playing (Grade 7) and coped by taking new pieces veryslowly and methodically, and listening to CDs where possible. He alwaysfound playing in a group very difficult.

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Pupil B9 did not read music at the start and was very slow to learn thenotes. At the time I attributed this to a slight squint, which she said gotworse when she was tired. Her eyesight was improved by remedialspectacles. This pupil had considerable problems with scales, which shecould not remember and in which she often completely lost her way. Thishappened especially when she felt under stress, as was the case duringher Grade 3 examination – which she passed but in which she failed thescales.

In the BDT she did quite badly on the tables (zero), some of which shefound she could complete only if she said them as fast as possible. Thesame thing was true of her scales, which went well only if she couldmaintain the speed. This seems likely to be due to a very weak short-termmemory – she regularly had to ask for things to be repeated and forgotwhich scale she was doing. Her singing teacher was of the opinion thatshe had ‘auditory dyslexia’.

At the time of the original study, when this pupil was under 13 and hadbeen playing for just over two years, she was not a good sight-reader.Since the original investigation, she persisted with the oboe and managedto take her Grade 5, in which she got a good pass, did well in thesight-reading but failed the scales. Another couple of years of readingand playing benefited her sight-reading, but her short-term memory didnot really improve with age.

A few other pupils in this intermediate group had interesting partialmanifestations of what I shall call ‘musical dyslexia’. B13 worked hard atscales and usually did well with them but was a poor sight-reader evenhaving taken her Grade 6 examination. Pupil B1 was very poor at mathsand hopeless at scales but over the long time that she learnt the oboe hersight-reading improved a lot, although little things like tied notes wouldalways throw her off track. She continued to learn the oboe (havingplayed for about eight years) and managed to get to the Grade 8 level,although she still found playing in a group difficult. Pupil B4 apparentlyhad no family history of dyslexia, but remained very poor at scales andsight-reading and seemed to have no internal pulse. She made very slowprogress, even though she had been playing for over six years. However,she made a very good sound and had a very good sense of pitch.

Low BDT group 0--2

On the whole, pupils in this group reached acceptable standards of scaleplaying and sight-reading within the limits of how much practising theywere able to do. However, there were a couple of notable exceptions.

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Pupils D4 and A3 were both extremely bad at scales and sight-reading.D4 was a boarder at school, had no parental help and did not practiseenough. He gave up after struggling at the Grade 2 level. At the time ofwriting, A3 still seems to have a genuine problem with scales, possiblyowing to a weak short-term memory (similar to B9). However, she is stillplaying the oboe, has recently taken Grade 4 and her sight-reading issteadily improving as she gains more experience of playing in variousgroups.

There were two reports of dyslexia in these pupils’ families (B8 andA4). However, B8 and A4 were both very good sight-readers and B8especially was very good at scales; so the dyslexia syndrome does notseem to have been inherited here.

B5 and C1 are still not very good at scales (especially B5). AlthoughI am not convinced that there is sufficient practice, in the case of B5 thereseems to be a genuine difficulty that is clearly not related to a dyslexiaproblem.

Discussion

In this survey of 37 school-age oboe pupils, who were all screened fordyslexia using the BDT, it was interesting to find that four pupils hadalready been officially diagnosed as dyslexic. If the other three pupils inthe high BDT range are included, the percentage figure is 19%.Considering that the generally accepted degree of dyslexia in thepopulation is rekoned to be between 4% and 10%, this figure seems ratherhigh, but is probably coincidental and the result of a fairly small samplesize.

Of particular interest was the gradual emergence of a family history ofdyslexia as increasingly dyslexia-positive answers were given to theother BDT questions. Of interest also were the individual characteristics(music- and sequencing-related) of the intermediate scorers on the BDTscale. It would be useful for the music teacher to be aware that some ofthe problems which were experienced by these pupils were similar inkind to those experienced by diagnosed dyslexic pupils who additionallyhave problems with reading and spelling.

It therefore seems likely that multisensory teaching strategies whichare known to benefit the clearly dyslexic pupil (demonstrating ratherthan explaining technique, enlarging the music, playing scales

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rhythmically and fast, clapping and walking around the room to establisha pulse, singing, making more use of the memorising of musical sections)can also be helpful for pupils in the intermediate category. Similarly, anyemphasis in the teaching process which makes use of the dyslexic pupil’soften greater right-brain ability (the ability to appreciate phrases andmelodic structure and the overall feel of the piece and to hear pitchesinternally) is going to be of benefit to dyslexic and intermediate pupilsalike (Denckla, 1990; Platel et al., 1997).

It is hoped that this report of the use of a fairly simple test for dyslexiawill help other music teachers to make more sense of the bewilderingvariety of talents and difficulties which our dyslexic and non-dyslexicpupils demonstrate.

I would like to thank Professor Tim Miles for his advice and help with the interpretation ofthe Bangor Dyslexia Test.

References

Crisfield, J. (ed.) (1996) The Dyslexia Handbook, British Dyslexia Association,Reading.

Critchley, M. and Critchley, E.A. (1978) Dyslexia Defined, Heinemann, London.Denckla, M.B. (1990) The paradox of the gifted/impaired child. In: Music and Child

Development, F.R. Wilson and F.L. Roehmann (eds), MMB Music Inc., St Louis.Ellis, A.W. (1993) Reading, Writing and Dyslexia, Psychology Press Ltd, Hove, East

Sussex.Harris, P. and Crozier, R. (2000) Teaching sight-reading. In: The Music Teacher’s

Companion: A Practical Guide, Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music,London.

King, C.A. (2006) Dyslexia and sight-reading, ISM Music Journal 72(February):356–359.

King, C.A. (2003) Music and Dyslexia, MA dissertation, Chapter Three, UniversityLibrary, Reading.

Lehmann, A.C. and McArthur, V. (2002) Sight-reading. In: The Science andPsychology of Music Performance: Creative Strategies for Teaching and Learning,R. Parncutt and G. McPherson (eds), Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Miles, T.R. (1997) The Bangor Dyslexia Test, Learning Development Aids, Wisbech,Cambridgeshire.

Miles, T.R. (1993) Dyslexia: The Pattern of Difficulties (2nd edn), Whurr, London.Oglethorpe, S. (1996) Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook, Whurr,

London.

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Pegg, L. (1994) The principles of influential music educators. In: Principles andProcesses of Music Teaching, Music Teaching in Professional Practice (Mttp),International Centre for Research in Music Education, Reading.

Platel, H., Price, C., Baron, J-C., Wise, R. et al. (1997) The structural components ofmusic perception: a functional anatomical study. Brain: A Journal of Neurology120(February, Part 2): 229–243.

Sloboda, J.A. (1985) The Musical Mind: The Cognitive Psychology of Music, OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford.

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seventeen

Suzuki benefits forchildren with

dyslexiaJenny Macmillan

Introduction

I believe many of the challenges encountered by children with dyslexiawhen learning a musical instrument are addressed by the Suzukiapproach. Teaching programmes for people with dyslexia need to bestructured, sequential, cumulative, thorough and multisensory. Plenty oflistening to music, repetition of assignments, participating in grouplessons, learning initially by ear and activities aimed at building pupils’self-confidence are recommended. The Suzuki programme covers allthese issues.

The ability to play a musical instrument offers enjoyment andsatisfaction, and raises self-esteem. However, learning to play aninstrument requires concentration, co-ordination and memory, as well asauditory, motor and spatial skills – all areas in which people withdyslexia may encounter difficulties. Common problems faced by thosewith dyslexia when studying music include learning notation,sight-reading, melodic and rhythmic repetition and maintaining a steadybeat.

I consider that many of these problems, identified in the researchliterature (Oglethorpe, 2002, 2003; Overy, 2000, 2003), are addressed bythe Suzuki approach. Indeed, Shinichi Suzuki claimed his‘mother-tongue’ approach to teaching children was effective for allchildren unless severely brain-damaged or disabled (Suzuki, 1982).



Music and Dyslexia

There are no failures. Any child who can speak his native languagehas the potential to learn to play the piano. (Bigler and Lloyd-Watts,1979, p. 2)

Rawson, writing in 1970, identifies the need for teaching programmesfor people with dyslexia to be ‘structured, sequential, cumulative, andthorough’, as well as multisensory. With reference to learning music, theBritish Dyslexia Association (1996) emphasises the need to build newinformation on existing knowledge, while Westcombe (2001) stresses theimportance of providing plenty of opportunities to revise previous work.Case studies of musicians with dyslexia by Backhouse (2001) andGanschow et al. (1994) mention the importance of repetition and oflistening to recordings when learning a new piece, the latter also claimingthat rhythms are easiest to learn by hearing them. The Suzuki programmeeffectively covers all these issues.

The Suzuki approach is highly structured. Lessons often start when thechild is 3 or 4 years old, when children’s aural and motor (though notvisual) skills are fully developed. Children begin by listening at length torecordings of the music they will learn in their first few lessons. They alsolisten to plenty of other good music so that the language of musicbecomes familiar to them. As with learning any language, it is best to startat an early age, and it is advantageous to be surrounded by the languagebefore and while learning it. Children spend some weeks observing thelessons of other young pupils so that when they start their own lessonsthe environment, the teacher and the expectations will be known andunderstood by child and parent. Parents are greatly involved at this earlystage, creating a positive, nurturing home environment, surroundingtheir child with music and observing lessons with their child.

From the very first lesson, posture and technique are emphasised asmuch as the importance of learning to listen to one’s sound at theinstrument. Teachers are careful to ensure that pupils start on suitablysmall-sized instruments; young pianists need an adjustable stool andfootstool that allow them to sit comfortably with their feet firmlysupported and not dangling. Children work sequentially through acommon core repertoire of pieces, which gradually introduce anddevelop various musical and technical skills. The repertoire progressesfrom variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star through various folk songs,minuets and sonatas to major works by the classical composers: Bach andMozart concertos on the violin, Haydn and Boccherini concertos on thecello and Bach’s Italian Concerto on the piano, for example.Supplementary repertoire, including ensemble music, is often introducedby teachers according to the needs of each student.

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The repertoire is carefully graded, each piece introducing one or twonew techniques and otherwise building on the library of skills which thepupil is rapidly developing. The approach is thorough as pupils arerequired to master every musical and technical point in one piece beforeprogressing to the next. Suzuki teachers give very specific instructions onhow to practise to improve musicianship and technique. Theseinstructions are demonstrated so the pupil can see and hear what ishappening. The pupil will then be asked to repeat the exercise severaltimes in the lesson so that the pupil, teacher and parent all know thepupil can achieve it. The parent notes down what is to be done and how,and encourages further repetitions at home. Dr Suzuki would ask pupilsto practise an assignment many times, not so that they could play itcorrectly but so that they could not play it incorrectly (Suzuki, 1969).

The programme is cumulative as pupils are encouraged to maintaintheir past repertoire. Essential basic skills, such as listening to their soundand learning to produce a beautiful tone, as well as playing with accuraterhythm, balance and intonation, are improved mainly by working onreview pieces, which are well known, rather than the newest,less-familiar piece.

Suzuki pupils learn using aural, visual and kinaesthetic senses. Theycontinue to listen daily to recordings of the music they are learning. Theyobserve other pupils’ lessons before or after their own. They see theirteacher demonstrate – they are asked to listen to the demonstration, towatch the hand and arm movements and may be invited to feel themovements by resting a hand on the teacher’s hand. Because of theemphasis on technique from the very first lesson, they learn to be awareof every movement at their instrument; because of the emphasis onmusicianship, they learn to listen very carefully to the sounds they aremaking. In the early stages, they learn by ear, removing the huge obstaclefor many children with dyslexia of reading. Later, when learning musicfrom the score, they continue to memorise very easily and normallyperform from memory.

Suzuki children attend regular group lessons, in addition to theirindividual lessons, at which rhythm games and singing activity gamesare played. This type of activity is recommended by Overy (2000, 2003)following her studies of children with dyslexia. People with dyslexia havedifficulty maintaining a steady beat (British Dyslexia Association, 1996).This can be helped by playing with other children in unison, duets orother ensembles at group lessons, as well as sometimes playing along withthe recording as recommended by Suzuki teachers. Children learn wellfrom their peers in groups, and there is the added benefit of the enjoyablesocial aspect of working together, developing musical skills in groups.

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Music notation is generally taught to Suzuki children from their veryfirst lesson in groups, through games with rhythm and pitch flash cards.Initially, Suzuki children play their instrument by ear. But once they havea secure technique and are producing a beautiful sound, they learn toread music while playing their instrument. Lauridsen (2002), a Danishpiano teacher who has investigated using off-staff notation, traditionalnotation and no notation, considers that: ‘not using any music notation atthe beginning level may be a very effective method for developingimportant listening skills’ (p. 14).

She thinks that advanced students are reluctant to engage in theprocess of elementary reading, and that they may find it difficult tounlearn the habit of looking at their hands when performing. In myexperience it is a matter of carefully judging when to introduce readingskills at the instrument, having ensured that notation is learntsequentially and thoroughly in group lessons. If reading is commenced atan appropriate time, Suzuki children have no particular problem inlooking at the music and developing ear–eye–hand co-ordination,because their auditory and motor skills are so secure.

Indeed, Anderson (2006, p. 23, citing Odam, 1995) emphasises that:

‘[R]eading music should never begin’ until pupils are able to use andto manipulate ‘musical sounds, procedures and constructions’fluently for themselves. [For those who] ‘fear that pupils who learninitially by ear will never read as well as those who start readingnotation in their earliest lessons . . . there is actually a growing bodyof evidence indicating that the reverse is true’.

Reading notation can be a huge difficulty for children with dyslexia.An approach which delays reading at the instrument until the aural andtechnical skills have been developed and allows independent,concentrated work on visual reading skills must be beneficial.

Backhouse (2001) mentions the low self-esteem that can easily developin people with dyslexia. Typically, repeated scolding by unsympatheticteachers will destroy the child’s self-confidence (Miles, 2001). Gilpin(2001), the mother of a cornet player with dyslexia, indicates that astructured approach with lots of repetition and praise is successful, andemphasises the importance of being well prepared for examinations.Suzuki teachers are trained to be very positive in their teaching andalways to find something to praise before suggesting some aspect forimprovement. They know it is essential for pupils to be thoroughlyprepared for their regular concert performances, so that eachperformance is a good experience and builds self-confidence. As Suzuki

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children receive enormous parental support, especially in the earlystages, they can start their lessons very young. While Suzuki childrenwith dyslexia may be behind their peers in some aspects of their learning,they may well be in advance of non-Suzuki children in theirmusic-making, and this helps build their self-esteem.

Plenty of listening to music, repetition of assignments, participating ingroup lessons, learning initially by ear and building self-confidence are tobe recommended for children with dyslexia. These issues are alladdressed by the Suzuki approach. Qualified Suzuki teachers havefollowed long and intensive training courses which cover childdevelopment and psychology as well as pedagogical and musical skills.They are, therefore, able to teach effectively according to each pupil’sstrengths by being flexible in their application of the Suzuki approach.

References

Anderson, S. (2006) Sound before symbol revisited: an alternative approach. PianoProfessional 12(September): 22–25.

Backhouse, G. (2001) A pianist’s story. In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.

Bigler, C.L. and Lloyd-Watts, V. (1979) Studying Suzuki Piano: More than Music,Summy-Birchard Inc., Secaucus, NJ.

British Dyslexia Association (1996) Music and Dyslexia Information Sheet, BDA,Reading.

Ganschow, L., Lloyd-Jones, J. and Miles, T.R. (1994) Dyslexia and musicalnotation, Annals of Dyslexia 44: 185–202.

Gilpin, S. (2001) John and his cornet. In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.

Lauridsen, B. (2002) Introducing music reading to beginners. Piano Journal 23(68):13–17.

Miles, T.R. (2001) The manifestations of dyslexia, its biological bases, and itseffects on daily living. In: Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors, T.R. Milesand J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.

Oglethorpe, S. (2003) Belief is the key: helping dyslexic pupils to succeed, PianoProfessional 2(April): 7–9.

Oglethorpe, S. (2002) Instrumental Music for Dyslexics: A Teaching Handbook, Whurr,London.

Overy, K. (2003) Dyslexia and Music: From timing deficits to musical intervention.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 999(November): 497–505.

Overy, K. (2000) Dyslexia, temporal processing and music: the potential of musicas an early learning aid for dyslexic children. Psychology of Music 28(2): 218–229.

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Rawson, M.B. (1970) The structure of English: the language to be learnt. Bulletin ofthe Orton Society 20: 103–123.

Suzuki, S. (1982) Where Love is Deep, World-Wide Press, New Albany, IN.Suzuki, S. (1969) Nurtured by Love, Senzay Publications, Athens, OH.Westcombe, J. (2001) How dyslexia can affect musicians: In Music and Dyslexia:

Opening New Doors, T.R. Miles and J. Westcombe (eds), Whurr, London.

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eighteen

Dyslexia: noproblem

Diana Ditchfield

Introduction

This chapter comprises two parts. In the first part Diana Ditchfieldreports on what happened during her meeting with Nigel Clarke; in thesecond part she offers some personal comments.

A meeting between Diana and Nigel

When approached about contributing to this book, Nigel felt he hadexplained his journey with dyslexia when writing a letter to his son,Joshua, in a chapter entitled ‘Silver lining’ in our previous book (Milesand Westcombe, 2001). He added that for him dyslexia was now noproblem. However, he was mindful that since dyslexia is of genetic originthere was a possibility that his son might have inherited some of his owndifficulties. In this letter Nigel related his journey from failure to success,particularly in the arena of musical composition.

Not much was known about dyslexia when Nigel was at school and hecould barely read and write when he was an adult. He joined the army asa musician and embarked on a musical career, which was his preferredchoice and where his penchant and latent skills in composition were



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fostered. This led eventually to a very successful studentship at the RoyalAcademy of Music.

Nigel said that his experiences in the army gave him time to catch up inliteracy, and he paid extremely high tribute to Robin Page and to his wife,Liz. Neither they nor Nigel knew that Nigel was dyslexic but rather thoughthe was a late developer. They helped him with music and also helped himto enjoy reading and to fill in the gaps in other aspects of his education.

While at the Royal Academy of Music, Nigel was awarded the JosiahParker Prize (adjudicated by Sir Michael Tippett) and the Queen’sCommendation for Excellence, which is the Royal Academy of Music’shighest distinction. Later he was Composition and Contemporary Musictutor at the Academy before becoming Head of Composition at theLondon College of Music and Media. He has now vacated that positionand works full time as a professional composer, work which includescomposing film scores. He is also Guest Professor at the Xinjiang ArtsInstitute in China and is Associate Composer to the Royal Military Schoolof Music, Kneller Hall, amongst many other positions.

Nigel and I had a full day together. We chatted and listened to hismusic and Nigel explained some of the ways he composes.

As a continuation of the concept of the ‘silver lining’ of Nigel’s journeywith dyslexia, he said that there was a sense in which he had been savedby dyslexia; there were so few things he could do that he had to exploitthe only areas in which he had any skill and/or success. This had allowedhim to be more focused and not to be distracted by things like choices ofwhat he might or might not do. He explained it by saying: ‘You have tomake the most of what you’re good at.’ It was a case of trying every chinkwhich might be an opportunity. ‘The first thing you have to do is to behonest. You have to be honest with yourself and with others.’

Nigel gave a further reason as to why his dyslexia was now noproblem. This was because of the technology available nowadays. Hepaid further tribute to his teachers named in ‘Silver lining’, particularly tohis hero Paul Patterson and others. He then added the name of the latePeggy Hubicki, for whom he clearly felt much affection and gratitude. Hesaid she had helped him to develop and use his strengths to compensatefor his weaknesses.

Nigel explained and demonstrated how he employs themusical-processing system Sibelius for composing, although he doessometimes use longhand methods if it suits or he feels so inclined. Healso showed me how he sets up a computer program for himself whilecomposing film scores in order to fulfil all the necessary highly detailedrequirements of doing the job of writing for a film. He paid particular

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tribute to his film-music writing partner Michael Csanyi-Wills, withwhom he collaborated and he also mentioned the contribution made byhis agent.

We watched extracts of some films on DVD which included the musicalscore. (We had previously heard some of these extracts without thepictures.)

Nigel said that a composer is able to make his mistakes in private,which is an advantage for a dyslexic. He starts with an idea – any idea –and tries out ways of working with it, maybe using the technologyavailable or his own musical background. He is open and as diverse aspossible at this stage and has a broad range of resources. It is his ownterritory and he said that he is not as vulnerable as, for example, a cellistwho is playing in performance where mistakes are glaringly obvious. Thecomposer has the opportunity to play by his own rules and draw othersinto his space. He has very specific targets even when he is setting out toachieve something different.

A further requirement of professional success as a composer andmusical film score writer is business acumen. Although Nigel did notlabour this point, he did refer to the mechanics of this part of what hedoes. As with any enterprise, the wheels cannot move without money.Films are an industry and the musical score writers are part of the whole.There is considerable expense in purchasing the technology which Nigelrequires in order to do the job. The whole process of making films is asmuch a financial enterprise for all concerned as it is a creative one.

In that we spent much of our time on how dyslexia is no problem toNigel in doing his job as a musical score composer for the film industry,there was not a great deal of it left for listening to his othercompositions. However, we did listen to Black Fire, which he described as‘the real me!’

Diana’s comments

There can be few statements which give so much joy to those workingwith dyslexics as those which tell of their successes. It is clear that Nigelhas realised his potential. By hook or by crook he has managed to handlehis particular pattern of dyslexia in such a way that it no longer standsin his way or prevents him from doing what he wants to do; possibly, too,he has taken advantage of his dyslexia in such a way that its positive

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aspects, including originality and creativity, have been allowed toflourish. It is a record of triumph over adversity, thanks to anextraordinarily positive attitude.

Nigel persistently refused to accept failure. Like many dyslexics, heworked extremely hard, and although there was a sense in which heattributed the silver lining of his dyslexia to good luck, many readers, likemyself, were reminded of the mantra that you make your own luck.

For Nigel, the time in the army appears to have been very significant inmany ways; in particular, he integrated with his colleagues and fellowmusicians and it also gave him a stable financial basis and encouraged hismusical gifts.

Listening to his compositions was a great treat for me. I could see howhis music students had benefited from his teaching. He invited me in toshare some of the techniques which he had created.

I also had the impression that Nigel had made a leap forward sincewriting to Joshua five years before. He did not need to elaborate in detailon his journey in reaching the various completed compositions; heallowed me to share his music and left the music to speak for itself.

It is a mighty challenge for the dyslexic to accept their dyslexia andNigel did this, partly because he had no other choice but also because itgave him a handle on things. He had to run with what he could whereverand whenever he could. In my view, he has turned dyslexia on its headand made it work in his favour. This, however, is no easy ride, but it is onein which he has succeeded and which should be of great encouragementto all other dyslexics, whether in the field of music or elsewhere.

The ability to sustain collaborative creative personal relationships isalso an attribute of Nigel’s own personality as well as those with whomhe works, although he dismisses some of this as being a beneficial sideeffect of having been in the army.

It helped me to a better understanding of the skills and crafts requiredin his job. However, although I was hugely impressed by these, I felt, andincreasingly feel, his musical creative gift of composition is undervaluedby his explanation that it is the use of technology which is the reason whydyslexia is no problem for him. I was allowed to be analytical and criticaland, above all, I was allowed to enjoy the music and take from it what Icould and wished. This was one of Nigel’s achievements, which is a greatindicator of his humility. That was, and is, the ultimate exposure ofhimself and his creativity. It is the summit of a creative professionalmusician to give all he can possibly give at any one time, in whateverfield of music the performer expresses him- or herself. I was allowed toenjoy the music.

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Amongst brief extracts which we watched and to which we listened,and which he co-wrote with Michael Csanyi-Wills, were Jinnah, starringChristopher Lee and James Fox, and Warner Bros’ biggest animation filmmade outside the USA, The Little Polar Bear, to mention only two. Nigel’sfriend Robin Page, who is mentioned above, often conducts the filmscores.

I tried to follow a very full musical score of his, Black Fire, as we listenedto it. It allowed me to confirm for myself that, whatever credit Nigel givesto his ability to do his job simply to modern technology, it is really his giftas a composer which, along with his own personality, is at the root of hisachievements. In Black Fire he had free rein. I would like to hear it again.It was a remarkable piece of music and just one of Nigel’s compositions.

He briefly told me of some of his others. Although he spends time onwriting film scores, his creative, musical gift is realised in writing otherworks also and these have been very widely performed. This is not justthe gift of dyslexia; this is the gift of music. Personally, I feel he subsumeshis very considerable musical creativity, hard work, persistence andremarkable and meticulous organisational skills and attention to detailinto the word ‘technology’ – and this is without including his engaginginterpersonal and social skills. It also does not really take into account hismusical educational experiences.

The wonderful thing is that Nigel has not allowed dyslexia to be animpediment in realising that musical gift but has employed it in so doing.Thus, there is not only a silver lining to dyslexia for Nigel; he has foundin it a motivational support on which he has capitalised. Nigel says,‘Hard work and technique can overcome most problems.’

Stella, his wife, and Joshua and his younger brother Emile and their lifetogether are all part of why dyslexia is no problem to him. As Joshua hasgrown and developed, it appears that he may indeed have inheriteddyslexia. If this were not the case, it is likely that thinking about dyslexiawould have receded from Nigel’s mind because it is no problem for himnow. However, dyslexia has been brought back into focus and is beinghoned as he sees some of Joshua’s difficulties and tries to understandthem with a view to helping him solve them. He can identify with someproblems but knows also that every individual dyslexic has their ownspecific pattern of difficulties. Both Nigel and Stella are also aware of thegift of dyslexia and are very concerned to help Joshua discover his owngift(s) in the most advantageous milieu in which to develop. They wantto foster what he is good at; they do not want him to be judged by rigidand inappropriate standards and are thankful that schools are moredyslexia-friendly nowadays.

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Conclusion

What, then, can we learn from Nigel’s case?It is a story of triumph over adversity. Many dyslexics may find it hard

to achieve fluent reading and spelling, but few are without skills of somekind, and they can be helped to discover what these skills are.

Nigel was successful at working in collaboration with others. This, Ithink, was because he was modest and unassuming and was able to besensitive to the feelings of others. To some dyslexics such sensitivity doesnot come easily, but it can be learnt and is essential for any dyslexic whoforms part of a team.

Nigel needed support and guidance from associates in expressing andarticulating his ideas, but he did not allow pressures from others to stiflehis creativity. Dyslexics should be encouraged to have confidence inthemselves.

Nigel was able to make the best use of available technology and this isan area where dyslexic learners in many different contexts can be givenuseful guidance.

Finally, he was persevering and never willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.The ability to persevere despite setbacks is, I am sure, a characteristic ofthe majority of dyslexics who have made a success of their lives.

Reference


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Section IV

Science takes usforward



nineteen

Insights from brainimaging

Katie Overy

Introduction

The human brain is a complex and fascinating organ that remains underintense investigation. Historically, debate about the nature of brainfunction has revolved around questions such as how the brain relates tothe mind, how the brain relates to the body and whether or not differentregions of the brain are specialised for specific types of processing. Until afew decades ago, the most common way of examining the latter questionin particular was to work with patients who had experienced braindamage. In this way, damage to specific regions of the brain wasassociated with specific impairments in skill (such as severe difficultieswith speech or balance).

More recently, extraordinary developments in brain-imagingtechnology have made it possible to capture the patterns of brain activitywhile they actually occur. These techniques are all quite different, relyingon electrical signals, magnetic signals, changing oxygen levels and/orblood flow. Consequently, the information gathered by each method isalso different, usually either providing accurate information about whereactivation occurs or accurate information about when it occurs. Thecombined information from these different techniques is rapidly leadingto a new body of knowledge regarding the musical brain, and, indeed,the dyslexic brain.

In this chapter, I will summarise some recent research findings in theseareas, beginning with a brief description of some of the most commonlyused imaging techniques.



Music and Dyslexia

Imaging techniques

Electro-encephalography (EEG)

Since neurons communicate with each other via electrical signals, oneway to examine brain activity is to measure the nature of the electricalactivity occurring at the scalp. This non-invasive technique uses smallelectrodes placed over the head (usually using a sort of hair net) that areable to detect the electrical signals from synchronised groups of neurons.This direct measure of neuronal activity provides extremely accuratetiming information (less than milliseconds), which is particularly usefulfor detecting the brain’s immediate response to expected or unexpectedstimuli.

Magneto-encephalography (MEG)

When activated, neurons produce both an electric signal and also amagnetic field that, in a magnetically shielded room, can be measured bysuperconductive pick-up coils above the head. In a similar way to EEG,the resulting data can provide extremely accurate timing informationabout neuronal activity. In addition, though, with appropriatedata-analysis techniques MEG data can give accurate information aboutthe location of a signal, to within a few millimetres.

Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

Another feature of brain activity is an increase in blood flow to activatedregions, accompanied by an increased supply of oxygen. By injecting aradioactive oxygen compound into the bloodstream, increased blood flowin specific brain regions can be traced with a spatial accuracy of aboutfive millimetres, thus identifying which parts of the brain are involvedduring certain types of task. One weakness of this method is the temporalresolution, since the timing of the activation cannot be identified withmore accuracy than about two minutes. Another considerable drawbackis the involvement of a radioactive injection, of which only a limitednumber can be safely administered during one lifetime.

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Insights from brain imaging

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)

Increased blood flow to a region of activated neurons results in a decreasein the proportion of deoxygenated haemoglobin in that region. Sinceoxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin have different magneticproperties, this change can be detected (in the presence of a largemagnetic field, the MRI brain scanner) and used to provide extremelyaccurate spatial information (between one and three millimetres) aboutwhich parts of the brain are activated during specific cognitive tasks. Thismakes fMRI a very powerful form of brain imaging, although the relianceon blood flow means that the temporal resolution of the technique is notvery fast (about three to eight seconds).

Neural processing of music

With the development of the brain-imaging techniques described above,there has been a surge of scientific interest in the musical brain. Whileresearch is still very much in progress, there is a growing consensus thatmusical experience activates many different regions of the brain, since itinvolves highly complex perceptual, cognitive and motor skills, inaddition to aesthetic and emotional responses. In order to examine suchprocesses experimentally, it is usually necessary to isolate one element ofmusical experience at a time, requiring the design of very specific musicaltasks (such as identifying whether or not two short melodies are thesame, or identifying when a ‘wrong’ musical chord is heard) andexamining how the brain behaves during their execution. This kind ofexperiment has led to a wide variety of research findings, which increasein their detail and diversity as brain-imaging techniques and newexperimental designs continue to develop.

Perhaps one of the most explored areas of musical processing to date ismelody perception. For example, a number of fMRI and PET studies havefound that melody tasks seem to engage the right auditory cortex morepredominantly than the left auditory cortex (see Zatorre, 2003). Althoughthis right-hemisphere lateralisation for melody is not found consistentlyacross all studies, it perhaps explains why music has traditionally beenassociated with the right hemisphere of the brain (based on earlyevidence from brain-damaged patients, for example). Harmonicprocessing has also been found to show a right-hemisphere dominance,for example various EEG studies have found more prominent activation

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in the right frontal regions of the brain during the detection ofincongruous chords in a harmonic sequence (for example Koelsch et al.,2000). However, some fMRI studies of pitch memory have found regionsin the left side of the brain to be more predominantly activated (forexample Gaab et al., 2003). This exemplifies the complex nature of musicalprocessing, which is distributed across many regions of the brain,including both the left and right cerebral hemispheres. It also exemplifiesthe fact that music can show different neural activation patternsdepending on the specific design of the experimental musical task.

Rhythm processing has not yet received the same research attention asmelody processing, but interest in this area is growing. One particularlyinteresting finding is the discovery that rhythmic listening tasks seem toactivate motor regions of the brain in addition to auditory regions. Forexample, fMRI studies examining the difference between regular andirregular rhythms have found that rhythms with a strong regular beatshow more activation of the basal ganglia, an area of the brain known tobe involved in generating movement (Grahn and Brett, 2007). Othertasks, such as comparing rhythms or tapping to rhythms, have beenfound to activate the cerebellum, a region traditionally associated withbalance, timing and motor control, as well as the pre-motor cortex, whichis involved in preparing for movement (Parsons, 2001; Sakai et al., 1999).Another interesting finding is that certain temporal aspects of musicappear to show some lateralisation towards left-hemisphere brainregions, which have traditionally been associated with language skills.Together with a body of related research, this has led Zatorre and Belin(2001) to hypothesise that the left auditory cortex is specialised for rapidtemporal information in both speech and music, while the right auditorycortex is specialised for spectral or pitch information in both speech andmusic, thus challenging the traditional view that language is wholly leftlateralised and music is wholly right lateralised.

In fact, there is increasing evidence that music and language sharecertain neural resources, which is perhaps not surprising when oneconsiders their similar characteristics. Both are forms of auditory humancommunication in which single perceptual units are combined accordingto complex cultural rules and hierarchies to create meaningful sequences.Thus, both rely on a similar range of perceptual and cognitive skills,including short-term auditory memory and long-term auditory learning.One brain region of particular interest here is a left-hemisphere frontalregion known as Broca’s area, which is well established as a languageregion of the brain centrally involved in speech production. Anincreasing number of neuro-imaging studies have found Broca’s area to

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be activated during musical listening tasks, such as rhythm processingand melodic and harmonic discrimination (Platel et al., 1997; Brown andMartinez, 2006). It has also been found that musicians show increasedactivation in this network (Bangert et al., 2006), which lends some supportto the numerous studies suggesting that musicians tend to outperformnon-musicians on language tasks (Chan et al., 1998; Kilgour et al., 2000)and also leads to fascinating questions about the potential effects ofmusical training on the brain.

Neural differences associated withmusical training

One major reason for an increasing amount of research into the musicalbrain is the current scientific interest in neural plasticity, that is thepotential of the brain to change in response to its environment. Musiciansare a particularly interesting experimental group for this type of work,since they spend thousands of hours practising over many years,developing not only expert musicianship but also extraordinary motorskills. A number of studies comparing the brain structure of musiciansand non-musicians have found certain differences, with musiciansexhibiting signs of increased left lateralisation of the left planumtemporale (part of the auditory cortex), increased volume in a region ofthe cerebellum (involved in timing and motor control) and increasedvolume in the front part of the corpus callosum (which connects andtransfers information between the two hemispheres) (see Schlaug, 2001).Further studies have suggested that musicians show increased greymatter (indicating the amount of neurons present) in Broca’s area and inthe primary auditory cortex (Sluming et al., 2002; Schneider et al., 2002).Although it has not been demonstrated that such structural braindifferences are actually caused by musical training (on the contrary, theymay simply facilitate excellent musical performance), there is increasingevidence to suggest that training may be a key factor. For example, it hasbeen shown that the regions of the motor cortex responsible for handmovements are more prominent in the left-hand region for violinists andin the right-hand region for pianists, suggesting that the type ofinstrument played (and the associated repetitive motor movements) mayaffect the type of brain differences observed (Bangert and Schlaug, 2006).

In a similar way, musicians and non-musicians are often found to show

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different neural activation patterns during musical processing. Forexample, musicians have been found to show stronger left-hemispherelateralisation during general musical-listening tasks, as well as duringspecific rhythm perception tasks (Evers et al., 1999; Vusst et al., 2005). EEGand MEG studies have also demonstrated that musicians tend to exhibitfaster and stronger neural responses to musical stimuli, such as melodicchanges and harmonically inappropriate chords (Pantev et al., 2003;Koelsch et al., 2002). It is possible, of course, that such activationdifferences are an indicator of innate musical ability, but it is increasinglysuggested that such differences are more likely to be due to the effects oftraining and increased exposure to music. Many studies find greaterdifferences with the early onset of training and an increased number ofyears of practice, while one recent study has shown that just one year ofviolin lessons can lead to faster and stronger neural responses to violintones in young children (Fujioka et al., 2006).

Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that musicians can also showdifferences in neural activation patterns during non-musical tasks.Broca’s area, for example (involved in speech production, as discussedabove), seems to show stronger activation in musicians compared tonon-musicians during spatio-temporal reasoning tasks and rapidtemporal processing tasks (Sluming et al., 2007; Gaab et al., 2005), whileeven the brain stem of musicians has been found to respond moreeffectively to speech signals (Wong et al., 2007). Recent work has alsoshown that children with musical training show stronger neuralresponses to language stimuli (Jentschke et al., 2005), while a discussionin the journal Trends in Neurosciences (Tallal and Gaab, 2006) outlines arange of evidence in support of the proposal that musical trainingimproves auditory processing and language development (Overy, 2003).Such developments have significant implications for the potential use ofmusic as a language-support tool for dyslexia, as discussed in Chapter 4.

Neural differences associated withdyslexia

The neural differences underlying developmental dyslexia have beendiscussed for many years, with some controversy. Since the specificnature of dyslexia-related deficits (and strengths) remain under

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discussion, with definitions and diagnostic criteria still being updated, itis not a simple matter to compare a group of dyslexic adults withnon-dyslexic adults and identify the key neural differences. In addition,the variability of language and literacy abilities in any group of dyslexicindividuals has been found to have a significant effect on any neuraldifferences identified. However, despite these difficulties, much researchhas been conducted in this area and both structural differences andfunctional activation differences are commonly found to be associatedwith dyslexia.

For example, the cerebellum is often implicated in dyslexia, withvarious studies reporting certain regions to be slightly smaller, to haveless grey matter and to show weaker activation during language tasks.Broca’s area has also been found to show less grey matter and to have asmaller surface area and weaker activation during language tasks. Theinferior parietal area (which is located just above the planum temporaleand is involved in multisensory integration) has also been found to showdifferences, with some data suggesting that it can be larger or moreleft-lateralised, particularly in high-achieving dyslexic adults. Otherreports have suggested that the planum temporale may be less stronglylateralised to the left hemisphere and that the corpus callosum may beslightly smaller in certain areas, although there is conflicting evidenceregarding these brain regions in particular (see Eckert, 2004 for a reviewof this anatomical research).

Despite the complexity of such findings, it is clear from the scientificliterature that there is a general trend for dyslexic adults and children toshow slightly weaker and delayed neural responses to language andlanguage-related auditory stimuli (for example Kujala et al., 2000; Bonteet al., 2006), while showing less left-lateralised activation for language(for example Cao et al., 2006). Indeed, many studies have found evidenceof right-lateralisation for language tasks (for example Spironelli et al.,2006; Dufor et al., 2007), lending some support to claims that dyslexia isassociated with right-hemisphere strengths such as global visuo-spatialability (von Karolyi et al., 2003). The various positive abilities reported tobe associated with dyslexia are only just beginning to be identifiedexperimentally, and so the neural basis of such strengths presents apromising new area for future research.

Another important area of current research is the examination of theneural effects of language-training programmes. A few recent studieshave found that, after specific phonological or auditory training, dyslexicchildren and adults show increased activity in left-hemisphere languageregions (Eden et al., 2004) and stronger and faster neural responses to

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language-related auditory stimuli (Kujala et al., 2001). Such findingsdemonstrate the incredible plasticity of the human brain, which iscapable of learning and adapting throughout the lifespan in response toexperience and training. This in turn lends powerful support tosuggestions that musical training might affect the neural basis oflanguage processing.

Discussion

It is apparent from the research presented in this chapter thatinvestigations into the mechanisms of the human brain are not a simplematter. Indeed, for many of the studies mentioned, it would be possibleto find a similar study reporting a contradictory finding. It is alsoapparent that musical performance involves many different regions ofthe brain, which may explain why dyslexic musicians can exhibitextraordinary strengths in some areas of musicality while experiencingdifficulties in other areas. For example, reports that timing skills can beproblematic in dyslexia may be partly linked to the role of the cerebellumin musical timing, since the cerebellum has been identified as a region ofthe brain implicated in dyslexia. The cerebellum is also responsible forgross-motor movement, which might help to explain why dyslexicchildren seem to benefit from learning to ‘feel’ rhythms using large bodymovements (Oglethorpe, 1996). Dyslexic musicians’ reported difficultieswith sight-reading may also be partly explained: the discovery of thenumerous regions of the brain involved in sight-reading at the piano hasled to the suggestion that this may be one of the most complexmultisensory activities conducted by humans (Sergent et al., 1992)!

It should be noted, though, that two important components of musicalexperience have not been discussed here: the emotional and socialaspects of music, which can be profound and, indeed, are often theprimary motivations for either performing or listening to music. Researchinto the neural basis of emotional responses to music suggests that thecore emotional systems of the brain are involved (Blood and Zatorre,2001), while the neural mechanisms of social music-making remain at thespeculative level but may involve regions of the brain known as themirror neuron system, which itself engages with perceptual andemotional regions (Molnar-Szakacs and Overy, 2006). There is no doubtthat future research into these elements of musical experience willprovide further valuable insights into the nature of the musical, dyslexicbrain.

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Bangert, M., Peschel, T., Schlaug, G., Rotte, M. et al. (2006) Shared networks forauditory and motor processing in professional pianists: evidence from fMRIconjunction. Neuroimage 30(3): 917–926.

Blood, A.J. and Zatorre, R.J. (2001) Intensely pleasurable responses to musiccorrelate with activity in brain regions implicated with reward and emotion.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98(20): 11818–11823.

Bonte, M., Parviainen, T., Hytonen, K. and Salmelin, R. (2006) Time course oftop-down and bottom-up influences on syllable processing in the auditorycortex. Cerebral Cortex 16(1): 115–123.

Brown, S. and Martinez, M. (2006) Activation of premotor vocal areas duringmusical discrimination. Brain and Cognition 63(1): 59–69.

Cao, F., Bitan, T., Chou, T.L., Burman, D.D. and Booth, J.R. (2006) Deficientorthographic and phonological representations in children with dyslexiarevealed by brain activation patterns. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry47(10): 1041–1050.

Chan, A.S., Ho,Y-C. and Cheung, M-C. (1998) Music training improves verbalmemory. Nature 396(November): 128.

Dufor, O. (2007) Top-down processes during auditory phoneme categorization indyslexia: a PET study. Neuroimage 34(4): 1692–16707.

Eckert, M. (2004) Neuroanatomical markers for dyslexia: a review of dyslexiastructural imaging studies. The Neuroscientist 10(4): 362–371.

Eden, G.F., Jones, K.M., Cappell, K., Gareau, L. et al. (2004) Neural changesfollowing remediation in adult developmental dyslexia. Neuron 44(3): 411–422.

Evers, S., Dannert, J., Rodding, D., Rotter, G. and Ringelstein, E.B. (1999) Thecerebral haemodynamics of music perception: a transcranial Dopplersonography study. Brain: A Journal of Neurology 122(Part 1): 75–85.

Fujioka, T., Ross, B., Kakigi, R., Pantev, C. and Trainor, L.J. (2006) One year ofmusical training affects development of auditory cortical-evoked fields inyoung children. Brain: A Journal of Neurology 129(10): 2593–2608.

Gaab, N., Gaser, C., Zaehle, T., Jaenke, L. and Schlaug, G. (2003) Functionalanatomy of pitch memory: an fMRI study with sparse temporal sampling.Neuroimage 19(4): 1417–1426.

Gaab, N., Tallal, P., Kim, H., Lakshminarayanan, K. et al. (2005) Neural correlatesof rapid spectrotemporal processing in musicians and nonmusicians. Annals ofthe New York Academy of Sciences 1060(December): 82–88.

Grahn, J.A. and Brett, M. (2007) Rhythm and beat perception in motor areas of thebrain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19(5): 893–906.

Jentschke, S., Koelsch, S. and Friederici, A.D. (2005) Neural correlates ofprocessing structure in music and language: influences of musical training and

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Kilgour, A.R., Jakobson, L.S. and Cuddy, L.L. (2000) Music training and rate ofpresentation as mediators of text and song recall. Memory & Cognition 28(5):700–710.

Koelsch, S., Gunter, T., Friederici, A.D. and Schroger, E. (2000) Brain indices ofmusic processing: ‘nonmusicians’ are musical. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience12(3): 520–541.

Koelsch, S., Schmidt, B.H. and Kansok, J. (2002) Effect of musical expertise on theearly right anterior negativity: an event related brain potential study.Psychophysiology 27(2): 308–314.

Kujala, T., Karma, K., Ceponiene, R., Belitz, S. et al. (2001) Plastic neural changesand reading improvement caused by audio-visual training in reading-impairedchildren. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98(18):10509–10514.

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Parsons, L.M. (2001) Exploring the functional neuroanatomy of musicperformance, perception, and comprehension. Annals of the New York Academyof Sciences 930(June): 11–31.

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Sluming, V., Brooks, J., Howard, M., Downes, J.J. and Robert, N. (2007) Broca’sarea supports enhanced visuospatial cognition in orchestral musicians. Journalof Neuroscience 27(14): 3799–3806.

Spironelli, C., Renolazzi, B., Voi, C. and Angrilli, A. (2006) Inverted EEGlateralisation in dyslexic children during phonological processing.Neuropsychologia 44(14): 2812–2821.

Tallal, P. and Gaab, N. (2006) Dynamic auditory processing, musical experienceand language development. Trends in Neurosciences 29(7): 382–390.

Von Karolyi, C., Winner, E., Gray, W. and Sherman, G.F. (2003) Dyslexia linked totalent: global visual-spatial ability. Brain and Language 85(3): 427–431.

Vuust, P., Pallesen, K.J., Bailey, C., van Zuijen, T. et al. (2005) To musicians, themessage is in the meter. Neuroimage 24(2): 560–564.

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twenty

Music reading:a cognitive

neuroscienceapproach

Lauren Stewart

The fact that many dyslexic children and adults are engaged in music,and often go on to reach high levels of success, illustrates that dyslexianeed not be a barrier to achieving high levels of musical accomplishment.However, despite this, there is growing anecdotal evidence from teachers,parents and students (Miles and Westcombe, 2001) that many dyslexicmusicians have particular difficulties with the notational aspects ofmusical learning. In the same way that theories of dyslexia (for examplethe phonological deficit hypothesis) emerged on the basis ofpsychological models of the normal reading process, it is critical to havean understanding of how normal music reading occurs. Once we knowthe building blocks involved in skilled music reading, it will be possibleto test the competency of each of these aspects in those with dyslexia todetermine which aspects cause the most trouble to dyslexic musicstudents, and where alternative teaching strategies are needed. With thisin mind, the following chapter is concerned with reviewing what weknow about the psychological and neurological aspects of music reading.

Musical scores are, as a rule, read in order to perform them. However,the outcome of a musical performance depends on many factors besidesan accurate reading of the score. General musical ability and the number ofhours spent practising the piece are just two additional factors. How thenis it possible to look at music reading in isolation from these other factorswhich influence musical performance? One way to do this would be topresent the musician with a written score and ask them to play the piecewith little or no preparation. Musicians, even of equivalent instrumental

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proficiency, will perform this task with varying degrees of success.The fact that accurate sight-reading performance cannot be accountedfor purely by instrumental proficiency tells us that the psychologicalprocesses involved in music reading and music playing are distinct.

In order to get an idea of how music reading is achieved, one approachhas been to ask what it is that skilled sight-readers do differently fromweaker sight-readers at the same level of musical proficiency.Measurement of the eye–hand span in pianists provides a measure of thedifference, in terms of notes played or time elapsed between the positionof the eyes and the position of the hands in the musical score, at a givenpoint in time. To demonstrate that the eyes are normally ahead of thehands during music reading, simply remove the musical score while amusician is sight-reading. Invariably, performance continues for severalseconds, implying that the brain has prepared and stored the relevantinstructions for performance of several notes in advance of the point atwhich the music is removed. The number of extra notes which can beplayed after the music is removed appears to relate to sight-reading skill.Pianists who perform sight-reading more accurately can play more notesafter removal of the score compared to pianists who are less skilled atsight-reading. They have a larger eye–hand span (Sloboda, 1974).

So, those musicians who look further ahead in the music do better atsight-reading. However, it would be a mistake to think that somemusicians are better sight-readers simply because they look furtherahead in the score. A wealth of experiments concerning eye movementsin text reading tells us that the pattern of eye movements made does notdetermine the rate at which our brain can process the information that itreceives, rather that the pattern of eye movements reflects the rate atwhich the brain processes this information. A finding which illustratesthis is that the eye–hand span can vary in the same individual dependingon the complexity and/or familiarity of the piece, constricting withsimple, familiar and tonal music and expanding with complex,unfamiliar and atonal music.

In order to discover the potential source of individual differences insight-reading, it is necessary to first consider what kind of tasksight-reading can be considered to be. In his treatise, ‘On reading music’,Lowery (1940) likens it to an exercise in pattern recognition:

We are led to the idea of pattern reading in which groups of notes arerecognised as being melodically and harmonically related so that theoccurrence of two or more notes of the group forming the patternmay be taken as symbolic of the whole and their recognition rendersfurther reading of the constituent notes unnecessary.

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This view is echoed, anecdotally, by practising musicians and has someexperimental support. For instance, when musicians and non-musiciansare presented with notated musical excerpts for a short time and requiredto copy them, musicians are significantly better than non-musicians atremembering information about the shape of the note sequences thannon-musicians, suggesting that this is how they read music when theyhave to perform it (Sloboda, 1978). Sight-reading may therefore involvegrouping notes together to form a ‘chunk’. All the notes within a chunkcan be processed at the same time but separate chunks must be dealt withconsecutively. For this reason, it is more efficient, in terms of brainprocessing, to parse the musical score into larger, fewer chunks. A modelof sight-reading (Wolf, 1976) suggests that knowledge acquired overyears of practice with different musical structures becomes stored inmemory and can be brought to bear on sight-reading performance. As theeyes scan the musical score, an attempt is made to match musicalstructures present in the notation with knowledge in memory concerninghow to play such structures. For example, an arpeggio starting on D maybe spotted easily, because of its distinctive visual pattern. Once detected,the reader can call up the instructions for playing this structure frommemory, leaving the eyes to scan further ahead, looking for yet morechunks in the music.

This pattern-matching process is strongly affected by the reader’smusical knowledge concerning, for instance, the musical style and/orstructure of the piece. Lowery (1940) writes:

[I]f the reader has some perception of the composer’s intentions, hewill expect to hear certain groupings of notes which constitute part ofmusical sentences.

Evidence of this comes from the demonstration of ‘proofreader’s error’in music reading, a phenomenon first noted by the distinguished pianistBoris Goldovsky. While giving a music lesson, Goldovsky was irritatedby a pupil who repeatedly and consistently played the wrong note at acertain place in Brahms’ Capriccio. After several futile attempts to correctthis assumed deviation from the score, Goldovsky realised that the pupilhad in fact produced an accurate rendition, since the score contained amisprint (a G rather than a G#) at this particular point. Struck by the factthat the misprint had gone unnoticed by all his previous pupils,Goldovsky challenged a group of professional pianists to find themisprint, allowing them to play the piece as many times as they liked.Unlike Goldovsky’s pupil, the professional pianists all played the musicas it should have been written, not as it was actually written. Rather than

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playing the notes one by one, they segmented the score into chunks,guided by their knowledge concerning the kinds of musical structuresthat could be expected in a piece of Brahms piano music. The process ofchunking and the influence of musical knowledge on this processresulted in the misprint being overlooked. It is telling that the musicalnovice, who was probably chunking the music less effectively comparedto the professional pianists, was able to produce an accurate, though lessmusical, rendition.

If sight-reading involves the matching of musical patterns (or chunks)in the score to instructions for the performance of these patterns inmemory, differences in sight-reading ability may result for severalreasons. By analogy, one can imagine that musicians possess a dictionaryof visual musical patterns and a dictionary of corresponding instructionsfor the performance of those patterns. Stronger sight-readers may possessa larger number of entries for either or both dictionaries. Alternatively,the number of entries may be equivalent between good and poorsight-readers, but the speed at which the corresponding visual and motorentries are matched may differ. A third possibility may be that the bettersight-readers may possess a greater knowledge of musical style andstructure, or may use such knowledge more effectively, in order to formexpectations regarding which musical patterns are likely or unlikely tooccur – the equivalent to only searching within a single section of thedictionary corresponding to the relevant musical style, rather thansearching all entries for all possible musical styles.

In addition to asking ‘What makes a good sight-reader?’, it is alsoimportant to ask, ‘What makes any kind of music reader, let alone a goodone?’ How do our brains deal with the task of decoding a set of visualsymbols (musical notes), ascribing some meaning to them and thenmapping them onto the appropriate set of musical responses?

Some of my own work has been able to address this question. A fewyears ago, I recruited a group of 15 musically untrained adults. Usingstandardised teaching and assessment methods, I taught them to readmusic and play keyboard to Grade 1 standard. Before and after learning, Iwould compare how their brains responded to seeing musical notation,in order to investigate how the process of acquiring musical literacychanges brain function.

The kind of brain imaging I intended to use, functional magneticresonance imaging (fMRI), is based on the concept that different parts ofthe brain are designed to deal with different types of information. Whilethere is no simple one-to-one relationship between brain regions anddifferent aspects of human behaviour (as the phrenologists advocated inthe eighteenth century), there is, however, some division of labour. The

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pattern of activity seen in the brain depends upon the type of task inwhich the brain is engaged. A typical fMRI study involves themeasurement of brain activity while a volunteer performs a task ofinterest inside the scanner, for example a language task, an arithmetic taskor a visual task. My study would measure brain activity as volunteerswere engaged in music-reading tasks. By having the volunteers performthe same tasks before and after musical training, I aimed to determinetraining-related changes in the brain’s response to musical notation. Toensure that any difference in brain activity between the two scanningsessions could not be attributed to general effects of scanning peopletwice (for instance people may be more relaxed the second time round), Ialso scanned a control group of volunteers who could not read or playmusic and were not included in the training part of the study.

I chose to engage the learners in three different types of music-readingtask, before and after training. Task one required learners to decodenotated melodies that were devoid of rhythm (all notes were crotchets),while task two required learners to decode notated rhythms which weredevoid of melody (each rhythm was notated on the same pitch). Boththese tasks required music reading and performance on a smallkeyboard, which was specially adapted for use in the high magnetic fieldenvironment of the fMRI scanner. In contrast, task three required neithermusic reading nor performance. Instead, learners detected a particularvisual feature amidst musical notation. This non-musical task allowed meto ask whether brain changes would be seen after musical training evenwhen the musical notation was merely incidental to the task.

The volunteer learners attended a music lesson every week for threemonths, completed theory exercises for homework and practised for atleast half an hour, three times a week. Although this was asking a lot ofthem – many had full-time teaching and lecturing jobs – a change in thebrain’s activity in response to musical notation depended upon each andevery one of them learning to successfully decode musical notation. Thesecond set of brain scans was already booked for three months ahead – itwas literally a race against time to change their brains.

Progress varied from one learner to the next, as did the pattern ofstrengths and weaknesses across the group. Nevertheless, all 12 learnersreached the required standard of Grade 1 theory and keyboard(Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music), as assessed by anexternal music teacher. This was convincing evidence that learning hadoccurred. Even so, the Associated Board Grade examination is a globalmeasure of musical skill, requiring candidates to perform prepared piecesof music, execute specified scales and arpeggios and sight-read. As apsychological measure, which would specifically relate to music reading,

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I devised the musical Stroop task (Stewart et al., 2004), based on a similarStroop task that has been used in language research since the 1930s(Stroop, 1935).

In the musical Stroop task, each learner sat in front of a keyboard, withthe fingers of the right hand over the notes G, A, B, C and D. A musicalbar containing a random assortment of the notes G, A, B, C, D appearedon a computer screen. On each note, a number, either 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, wassuperimposed. The learners were asked to ignore the musical notes andto pay attention to the numbers alone, using them to make a sequence ofkeypresses. They were told to associate the number 1 with a keypressmade by the thumb, the number 2 with a keypress made by the indexfinger and so on. Once all five keypresses had been made, another bar ofnotes would appear and the learners would continue in the same way.The crucial feature of the experiment was that sometimes the numbersand notes would coincide and sometimes they would not. In cases wherethe numbers and notes coincided, the number 1 would be superimposedon the note G, the number 2 would be superimposed on the note A, andso on, so that both the notes and the numbers would specify the samesequence of keypresses. In cases where the numbers and notes did notcoincide, the number 4 might be superimposed on the note G, thenumber 1 might be superimposed on the note A, and so on, so that thenotes and numbers specified a different sequence of keypresses.

Even though the learners were instructed to ignore the musical notes inall conditions, the prediction was that when the notes and numberscoincided, specifying the same sequence of keypresses, the learnerswould be quicker to execute the sequence of keypresses compared towhen the notes and numbers specified a different sequence of keypresses.This prediction was based on evidence from the classic Stroop task thatliterate individuals cannot ignore the written word. If the word ‘red’ iswritten in blue ink and people are asked to name the ink colour, they areslower to say ‘blue’ compared with the situation in which the string ofletters ‘XXX’ is written in blue ink. Despite instructions to disregard theword itself and focus only on its colour, the brain automatically processesthe written word and the tendency to say the word ‘red’ must besuppressed. Musical literacy might, I thought, have a similar effect in theanalogous musical Stroop task. Once musical notes have acquired somemeaning, their presence would be impossible to ignore, with consequenteffects on the speed at which a sequence of keypresses could be made.

A comparison of the speed at which the learners made a sequence ofkeypresses in the two contrasting situations – when the notes andnumbers coincided and when they did not – showed that they wereconsiderably faster in the former case, relative to the latter. In contrast,

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the speed at which non-musicians made a sequence of keypresses did notdiffer according to whether the notes and numbers coincided.Non-musicians were oblivious to whether the notes and the numbersspecified the same sequence of keypresses because, for them, musicalnotes did not specify any sequence of keypresses at all.

Taking this experiment a step further, the two groups were alsocompared on a similar Stroop task in which number-to-finger mappingwas pitted against a spatial stimulus-to-response mapping (Stewart et al.,2004). Numbers, again between 1 and 5, appeared in vertical positionsthat were either congruent or incongruent with respect to the requiredresponse. For instance, a ‘5’ appearing in the uppermost vertical position(and requiring a keypress with the little finger) would be congruent forpianists, since notes appearing higher up the stave are mapped to morerightward responses on the keyboard. A ‘5’ appearing in the lowermostvertical position (also requiring a keypress with the little finger) would beincongruent, since notes appearing lower down the stave are mapped tomore leftward responses.

Pianists, but not non-musicians, showed a response-time differencebetween the congruent and incongruent conditions. In other words, theyshowed evidence of having developed a set of vertical-to-horizontalstimulus-to-response mappings. It seems that the demands of constantlymapping from musical notes (the pitch of which is organised in verticalspace) to a set of response elements (keys of the piano) which vary inhorizontal space forges a set of spatial mappings which are in evidenceeven outside a musical context.

Both the Grade 1 examination results and the musical Stroop taskshowed that the training had achieved its aim of instilling knowledge ofmusic notation. But how was this reflected in terms of changes in brainactivity? To answer this I scanned the learners and non-learners for asecond time, and, for each group, compared the data from each of thethree tasks before and after training. The results of this comparisonshowed that the brain of the now music-literate learners had changed in avery specific way (Stewart et al., 2003). Some of the changes were specificto the task, while some changes were seen in more than one task.

In task one, where learners decoded musical melodies, a small area inthe superior parietal lobe of the brain became active after learning, whileit remained inactive in people who had not been taught. This areaspecialises in dealing with spatial information, especially when thespatial co-ordinates must be used to organise our behaviour. For instance,catching a ball requires the brain to convert information about the spatiallocation of the ball and its trajectory into instructions for the movementsystem. While I would not claim that reading music for melody is akin to

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catching a ball, both may be argued to belong to the same broad categoryof behaviours. Reading music for melody, like catching a ball, requiresspatial information (the position of a note on the stave) to be convertedinto a movement (selection of the appropriate keypress). The brainspecialisations that allow us to move around in space and react to eventsoccurring in our environment are found in other animals and are presentfrom birth in humans. Music reading, as a culturally acquired activity,seems to have taken advantage of this pre-existing specialisation for theuse of spatial information to organise musical responses.

In task two, where learners decoded musical rhythms, an area in theoccipital region of the brain was active after training. This area is knownto be important for making visual discriminations. For instance, in orderto distinguish different species of bird, we have to rely on relatively smalldifferences in their visual appearance. In the same way, reading musicalrhythms relies upon distinguishing between small visual features: howmany tails are present on the note stem? Is there a dot after the note?When reading notation for melody, spatial information is important;when reading notation for rhythm, visual features are important. Ofcourse, music is normally read for both melody and rhythmsimultaneously, and future studies will be able to determine how thebrain combines both spatial and visual feature information to produce asingle musical response that is integrated in space and time.

Tasks one and two required the learners to read and play from musicalnotation. Task three required neither. Instead, it was a visual taskembedded within musical notation. Would training cause changes in thebrain’s response to musical notation, even when the notation is incidentalto the task? The answer was ‘yes’ – two areas of the brain were activeafter training, specifically in the learners’. One of these areas, the superiorparietal cortex, was identical to the area activated in task one. The otherarea was in a different area of the parietal lobe, called the supramarginalgyrus, which is known to have a role in the preparatory stages ofmovement. In the context of task three, these two different brainactivations imply that simply seeing musical notes after training sets inmotion a whole string of neural events related to the learnt musicalresponses conveyed by the musical notation. Just like the results of themusical Stroop experiment, these changes in brain activity show thatmusical training causes notes to acquire a significance that cannot besuppressed.

The above consideration of music reading suggests some candidateareas of difficulty for the dyslexic musical learner. In particular, musicreading requires fast, automatic translation between spatial (pitch) andfeatural (rhythm) information on the stave, and a set of

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instrument-specific responses. Skilled music readers achieve a degree offluency that allow them to produce the appropriate musical response toone chunk while they are already looking ahead and preparing themusical response to the next. They use top-down knowledge to avoidhaving to translate every note, instead preparing the appropriateresponse on the basis of a pattern they have detected (for example anarpeggio or scale), giving them a shortcut. Each of these is a potentialproblem area for dyslexics, who, as with word reading, may have to relyon slower, more explicit strategies to achieve the same musicalperformance. Although there is more work still to do in order to fullycharacterise all the cognitive processes that are involved in music reading(for instance how information from the spatial and featural aspects ofnotation are combined), there is some foundation on which to build onthe valuable anecdotal reports from dyslexic musicians to formallyinvestigate which aspects of music reading present the most difficulty fordyslexic learners. Once this challenge has been met, the stage will be setfor an evidence-based development of alternative teaching strategies fordyslexic musicians.

References

Lowery, H. (1940) On reading music. Dioptric Review and British Journal ofPhysiological Optic 1: 78–88.

Miles, T.R. and Westcombe, J. (2001) (eds) Music and Dyslexia: Opening New Doors,Whurr, London.

Sloboda, J.A. (1978) Perception of contour in music reading. Perception 7(3):323–331.

Sloboda, J.A. (1974) The eye–hand span: an approach to the study ofsight-reading. Psychology of Music 2: 4–10.

Stewart, L., Henson, R., Kampe, K., Walsh, V. et al. (2003) Becoming a pianist: brainchanges associated with learning to read and play music. Neuroimage 20: 71–83.

Stewart, L., Walsh, V. and Frith, U. (2004) Reading music modifies spatialmapping in pianists. Perception and Psychophysics 66(2): 183–195.

Stroop, J.R. (1935) Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal ofExperimental Psychology 18: 662.

Wolf, T. (1976) A cognitive model of musical sight-reading. Journal ofPsycholinguistic Research 5(2): 143–171.

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Index

(Note: Individual instruments are listed under the entry ’Instruments’.)

Adult Dyslexia Organisation, 3, 9Asperger’s syndrome (see also Autistic

spectrum disorders), 7, 9Assistive technology, 79–80, 101–5,

144–8 passimadvantages and disadvantages,

79–80, 102–3, 104–5computer software, 79

Access, 79Apple’s Logic Pro and

Digidesign’s Pro Tools, 103–4Computer Touch, 79Cycling74’s Max/MSP, 104Dragon, 79Excel, 80Kurzweil, 79Multimedia Interactive Calculator,

72, 74Musical Instrument Digital

Interface (MIDI), 102–3PowerPoint, 80Sibelius, 80, 101–2, 105, 122, 144

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD),5–6

Attention Deficit HyperactivityDisorder (ADHD), 5–6, 9

Audio-editing (see Assistivetechnology)

Auditory perception, 62, 65–6, 82–3Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), 5,

7, 9

Bangor Dyslexia Test, 9, 124–35Bosworth, Nick, 114Bottesini, Giovanni, 96Brain (see Neurological issues)BRAIN HE project, 9Brain imaging, 151–8, 165–6

Electro-encephalography (EEG), 152,156

functional Magnetic ResonanceImaging (fMRI), 153, 154, 165–6

Magneto-encephalography (MEG),152, 156

Positron Emission Tomography(PET), 152, 153

British Dyslexia Association, 9, 114

CameosEarly years, 52–4Literacy and music skills, 89–91Troubles with the stave?, 16



Index

Classroom (see Teaching strategies)Colour Staff, 73, 76, 109Co-morbidity, 5, 7

lumping and splitting, 7Composing, 143–8Computer software (see Assistive

technology)Confidence (see Self-confidence)Cortical homunculus, 95–6, 97Csanyi-Wills, Michael, 145, 147

Deidre, 45–52Developmental co-ordination disorder

(DCD), 6Developmental differences, 4, 5Dyslexia, 3–4

benefits of, 71, 80, 100, 145–6,157

causes of, 4functional activation differences,

156–7hereditary, 4, 5–6, 127–9, 132, 133,

134, 143structural differences, 156–7

constitutional basis of, 4, 151–8passim, 162–70 passim

definition of, 3–4, 57–8, 156,diagnosis of, 8, 156–7

co-morbidity, 5, 7,formes frustes, 132lumping and splitting, 7

difficulties of,for the musician, 117, 118–23, 137in social situations, 11–12when travelling, 14–15, 111–12with left and right, 4, 8, 12–13, 14,

23, 127with organisation, 5, 20, 50–2, 147,

148with reading, 12, 82–3with time management, 13–14, 15,

20, 113incidence of, 124, 134indicators of, 49, 53sequencing problems, 132

strategies for dealing with, 14, 70, 89,98–9, 120, 144

accepting dyslexia, 100, 146perseverance, 50, 60, 114–15, 147,

148using technology (see Assistive

technology)temporal processing, 27, 28timing and, 26–8

Dyslexia Action, 9,Dyscalculia, 6, 14–15Dyspraxia, 5, 6, 9, 119

Electro-encephalography (EEG) (seeBrain imaging)

Ellis, Nick, 8Examinations, 55, 76, 80, 114, 115, 166

dyslexic issues and, 75, 76, 79guidelines for dyslexic candidates,

88stress and, 76, 133

Familial incidence of dyslexia, 4, 5,127–9, 132–4 passim, 143

Fingering (see also Keyboard skills), 23,50, 65, 93, 96, 97, 98, 125–6, 129

Functional magnetic resonanceimaging (fMRI) (see Brainimaging)

Games (see Rhythm games)Goldovsky, Boris, 164–5group work, 33–4

Haddon, Peter, 109, 113–16Helpers, 77, 79, 110Hubicki, Margaret (Peggy) (see also

Colour staff), 73, 109–11, 112, 144

Imaging techniques (see Brain imaging)Instruments (see also Singing), 25, 52

cello, 60–2, 65, 92, 94, 98Celtic harp, 16double bass, 94drums, 53, 62

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Index

guitar, 23, 92, 94, 97, 98oboe, 124–35piano (see also Keyboard skills), 63–4,

86–7, 125–38, 155, 158, 163,164–5, 168

trumpet, 62–3violin, 155, 156

Irlen lenses, 79

Keyboard skills (see also Instruments,piano), 23, 49–50, 84

key signatures, 85–6orientation, 23, 84, 86–7teaching, 23, 45, 49–50, 51, 83–8

Kodaly method, 29, 42–3, 46

Magneto-encephalography (MEG) (seeBrain imaging)

Mathematical notation (see Notation)Mathematics (see also Dyscalculia), 6,

12, 68–74dyslexics’ difficulties with, 12,music and, 50, 68–9teaching, 69, 71–2the dyslexic learner and, 69–72times tables, 4, 6, 8, 70, 127, 132,

133Memory (see also Sight-reading and also

Fingering), 13, 16, 49, 96–7, 98,139

auditory, 64aural, 48, 94melodic, 48muscular, 48, 94–5overcoming difficulties, 78rhythmic, 48short-term, 4, 46, 133, 134teaching to overcome difficulties, 78techniques for improving, 70–1, 73,

93Colour Staff, 73, 76, 109metronome, 93, 97multisensory, 20, 70–1, 94rote learning, 48, 94, 137, 138

Mnemonics, 16, 20, 73, 80

Multisensory learning, aspects of (seealso Assistive technology), 20,28–9, 51, 70–3, 87–8, 94

Colour Staff, 73, 76, 109definition of, 70–1Dienes blocks, 72learning note and letter names, 65,

68–74, 97–8, 99of benefit to dyslexics, 134–5preferable to memorising, 70–1teaching approach, 65, 70–3

Musicactivities programme (see Rhythm

games)benefits to dyslexics of, 26–7, 30, 49,

52–4, 59, 156auditory perception, 26, 62, 65–6co-ordination, 29, 35, 36developing auditory perception,

26, 65–6encouraging non-musical literacy,

53, 64encouraging reading, 66improving concentration, 30, 46,

51, 63–4, 65, 66improving handwriting, 66improving memory, 48, 49, 70–1,

73in other classes, 66language skills, 26–7, 29, 32, 45,

154–8 passimlistening skills, 37, 48literacy skills, 32, 42, 47, 53, 64, 66memorisation, 29, 70–1, 73motor skills, 29, 36, 37, 51perceptual skills, 30phonological skills, 26, 42rhythm skills, 26self-confidence, 30, 48, 60–1, 78,

114, 148self-esteem, 59, 66, 137, 140social skills, 30spelling, 26, 27, 42, 65–6teamwork, 62–3, 66, 132, 139, 148tracking, 60

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Index

Music (Continued)definition of, 57educational approaches (see also

Rhythm games)Kodaly method, 29, 42–3

emotional aspects of, 158influence on language skills, 26,

27–8, 29, 32, 42, 157–8language and, 26–7pleasure in making, 47, 52, 53, 56, 61,

68, 71Music lessons, 58–9, 60–1Musical games (see Rhythm games)Musical instruments (see Instruments)Musical notation (see Notation)

Name match condition, 8–9National Autistic Society, 9Neurodiversity, 5, 9Neurological issues (see also Brain

imaging), 151–8, 162–70areas of the brain, 151, 153–8, 165–6,

168–9Broca’s area, 154–5, 156, 157effects on, when playing different

instruments, 155–6left and right hemispheres, 58, 153,

154, 155, 158cerebellum, 154–8 passimneural processing of music, 153–8,

162–70rhythm processing, 154, 158sight-reading and, 158

Notation (see also Symbols), 68–74,110–11

introducing to dyslexics, 72–3, 87–8learning note and letter names, 20,

65, 94, 97–8, 99Colour Staff, 73, 76, 109

mathematical and musical, 50, 68–74musical, 16, 68–9, 70

difference between music and, 68,69, 72–4

the dyslexic musician and, 47, 51,68–74

neurological aspects of, 162–70teaching, 22–3, 47, 51, 54, 65, 68–74,

139–140

Orton–Gillingham, 94, 97–8

Page, Robin and Liz, 144, 147Patterson, Paul, 144Perseverance, 50, 60, 114–15, 147, 148Phonology, 4, 8, 27, 126

phonological development, 26, 42phonological processing, 47

Pitch, 47, 64–5, 83, 133, 154Positron Emission Tomography (PET)

(see Brain imaging)Posner, 8

Reading music (see also Sight-reading),64, 123, 125, 139–40, 162–70

difficulties for dyslexics when,169–70

methods to help with, 19–20, 65–6neurological aspects of, 162–70notation versus memory, 16, 55psychological aspects of, 163

Reluctance to learn, 55–6, 58–9,Rhythm (see also Rhythm games), 26–43

helping dyslexic pupils with, 24,literacy and, 26, 28, 32, 41, 42, 47memory and, 28, 29, 48neurology and, 154, 158, 169problems with, 27, 35sight-reading and, 83, 86skills, 26, 27, 28, 33, 34, 37, 41–2, 119teaching, 24, 26–43, 86

Rhythm games, 28–43, 47, 139advantages of, 26–32 passim, 37, 38,

41–3disruptive behaviour during, 31, 33examples of, 34–41

Earwiggo, 28–9, 31–2, 34–41, 42Education Through Music (ETM),

28, 30–1, 42Growing with Music, 28, 29–30, 42Johansen Sound Therapy, 28

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Index

Name Game, 34–5Pass the Beater, 36–7Rhythm Balloons, 38–9Rhythm Squares, 40–1Spot the Difference, 37

Rhythm processing (see alsoNeurological issues), 154, 158

Samples/sampling, 103Scales, 51, 129–34Screening for dyslexia (see Bangor

Dyslexia Test)Self-confidence/esteem, 30, 59–61, 114,

137, 140, 148Sibelius, 80, 101–2, 105, 122, 143Sight-reading (see also Brain imaging),

16, 82–91, 131–4 passim,aural memory and, 94chunks (pattern-matching), 163–5,

170differences between words and

music, 82–3eye movements, 89eye–hand span, 163–5factors for successful, 70, 129, 131–3

passim, 162–3key signatures, 85, 129melody and, 168–9muscle memory, 48, 94number–finger mapping, 167orientation at the keyboard, 23, 84,

86–7photographic memory, 98piano and, 158preparation for, 83proofreader’s error, 164–5rhythm and, 83, 86, 88, 169scales and, 129–34Stroop task, 166–8teaching, 20, 25, 83–6, 89–91techniques

Bottesini, 96keyboard, 85–6literacy skills, 28–9, 32, 42, 53, 94,

97, 167

multisensory, 70–3, 94Orton–Gillingham, 94, 97–8sounding out loud, 93Suzuki, 139–40three stages, 98using the eyes as hands, 97, 99

whole-pattern recognition (see alsochunks), 82, 83

Singing, 19–20, 24, 26–43, 53–4, 118–23,139

Spelling, 4, 26, 27, 42, 65–6Stroop task, 166–8Suzuki, 137–41

benefits of, 137, 140structure of, 138–9, 140–1

Symbols (see also Notation), 4, 6, 8, 54,68–74, 83, 110, 122

Syndromes (see under individual entries)

Teaching (see also Examinations and alsoInstruments), 4, 77–80, 110,115–16, 123

checklists, 19–25equipment for, 21–2, 79–80, 89, 135

(see also Bangor Dyslexia Test)extra time and, 79issues concerning, 76singing, 19–21, 24, 26–43, 54, 117,

118–23the dyslexic helper and, 77, 79,

110Teaching strategies, 19–25, 137–8

after the lesson, 25board work, 19–20dealing with disruptive behaviour,

24–5, 31, 33, 45dealing with dyslexia-specific

difficulties, 23, 170high and low, 23left and right, 8, 127

engaging with pupils, 15, 31–4,48–51 passim, 58–9, 76, 110–12

multisensory approaches, 20, 22–3,62, 65, 70–3, 76, 79–80, 87–8

need to go slowly, 73, 78

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Index

Teaching strategies (Continued)one-to-one, 24, 50, 62, 76, 90, 114–15,

123Peggy Hubicki’s, 109–11performing notation, 23, 47photocopying, 23, 79rhythm, 24, 50, 86short-term goals, 63–4, 123Suzuki, 137–41targets, 48worksheets, 19–20

Technology (see Assistive technology)Theory work, 75–6, 78–9

assistive technology (see alsoAssistive technology), 79–80

helpers, 79mnemonics, 16, 20, 73, 80

Varese, Edgard, 104Verbal labelling, 4, 69, 126Visual match condition,

8–9

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